United States First Circuit

Denial of a petition for habeas relief from a conviction for first degree murder and mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole is affirmed over claims of error that a prosecutor's prejudicial misstatement during closing arguments, and the court's subsequent failure to directly cure the misstatement, resulted in a fundamentally unfair trial and the infringement of petitioner's right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Appellate Information

• Decided 08/15/2008
• Published 08/15/2008

Judges

• LIPEZ, Circuit Judge., Before TORRUELLA, JOHN R. GIBSON, and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States First Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Brownlow M. Speer, with whom the Committee for Public Counsel Services was on brief, for petitioner.


• For Appellees:
  
• Scott Katz, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Martha Coakley, Attorney General, was on brief, for respondent.