Connolly v. Commonwealth

How courts have described this case

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

• noting with disapproval “repeated use of ‘finding’ language when explaining the law of self-defense”
• court must reach the merits of claim “to ensure that there has been no substantial miscarriage of justice”
• cases where new trials were ordered because the law of self-defense was either misstated to the jury or explained to them with undue emphasis on the making of “findings”
• where murder is charged, if self-defense is in issue, instructions are required
• instruction strongly implied that defendant bore burden of proving elements of self-defense
• \[N]o general statement of the charges can remedy a specific instruction which is defective 'unless the general statement clearly indicates that its consideration must be imported into the defective instruction' \

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).