Jurisdiction, Of crime. Grand Jury. Evidence, Grand jury proceedings, Photograph, Relevancy and materiality, Inflammatory evidence, Prior misconduct. Practice, Criminal, Capital case, Request for jury instructions, Grand jury proceedings, Trial of indictments together, Severance, Conduct of prosecutor. Jurisdiction of a murder trial lodged in the Superior Court, where sufficient evidence permitted a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant at least inflicted violence or injury on the victims in Massachusetts, by means whereof their deaths ensued []; further, the judge did not err in declining the defendant's request for a special jury question regarding territorial jurisdiction over the defendant's charged crimes.
There was no merit to the criminal defendant's claim that the integrity of grand jury proceedings against him was impaired by the prosecutor's failure to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury and the prosecutor's presentation of allegedly false testimony; further, although the prosecutor erroneously presented some prior bad act testimony, the evidence would not have influenced the grand jury's decision to indict.
This court vacated the criminal defendant's conviction of kidnapping, where the theory on which the Commonwealth proceeded at trial previously had been dismissed. At a murder trial, the judge did not abuse his discretion in admitting in evidence photographs of certain weapons that the defendant's coventurer could have used in the crimes, and although the judge erred in admitting photographs of certain other weapons that were not used in the crimes, the error was not prejudicial []; likewise, the judge did not abuse his discretion in admitting anatomical drawings found in the coventurer's home, where the drawings connected the defendant and the coventurer to the joint venture []; finally, testimony regarding six uncharged schemes that the defendant orchestrated was admissible to show the defendant's motive to silence one of the victims and the great lengths to which the defendant would go to attempt to secure such silence.
At a murder trial, no substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice arose from the joinder of the charges of murder in the first degree with the lesser charges, where a series of increasingly violent crimes committed against one of the victims constituted a pattern that escalated to a final attack on that victim and the other victims.
A motion to sever the indictments was heard by C. Jeffrey Kinder, J. In February , the defendant was found guilty by a jury of three counts of murder in the first degree for the brutal killings of David Glasser, Edward Frampton, and Robert Chadwell.
