DeJoinville v. Commonwealth

How courts have described this case

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

• unavailability of constitutional claim at time of trial excuses failure to raise claim in ordinary course
• a defendant is not barred “from raising claims whose constitutional significance was not established until after the petitioner’s trial and appeal”
• where the jury may have relied on erroneous instruction, court cannot assume harmless error and case remanded for new trial
• waiver not applicable to constitutional [or nonconstitutional] claim not sufficiently developed to afford defendant “genuine opportunity to raise his claim”
• cases decided prior to appeal did not “providef] sufficient guidance so that the petitioner can be said to have had a genuine opportunity to raise his claim at that time”
• constitutional issues, later decided, may be considered in the absence of objection

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).