Commonwealth v. Westmoreland

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• abandonment of McHoul and Gould defenses at final argument deprived defendant of effective assistance of counsel
• ineffective assistance of counsel found where counsel presented evidence supporting three defenses but abandoned two of them in closing, arguing only weakest one
• the abandonment of insanity defense at closing argument likely deprived defendant of otherwise available, substantial ground of defense
• statement, “I’m not making any statement knowing that I am being held for this alleged murder of said person,” not invocation when immediately followed with proclamations of innocence without provocation
• in summation, counsel failed to discuss evidence in support of possibly viable defense theory
• items recovered from crime scene generally admissible but must still be relevant

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).