#Course hero c269 task3 trial#
#Course hero c269 task3 plus#

The two men arrived in Pittsfield at approximately 1 A.M. Matchett admitted bringing two guns with him, a revolver which he said he always carried for protection of personal property and a pistol which he was trying to sell. Matchett's German shepherd dog was in the rear of the wagon. No specific date, however, was set for this meeting.Īt approximately 9:30 P.M., Samson and Matchett left Boston for Pittsfield in Matchett's station wagon. A few weeks prior to February 12, 1979, Colvin had told Samson that he was getting some money together and to come up in a couple of weeks to be paid. The purpose of the trip was to collect the gambling debt from Colvin.

#Course hero c269 task3 plus#

Samson testified that, over dinner, he agreed to hire Matchett for $100, plus expenses, to drive him from Boston to Pittsfield later that night. At this time, Matchett was employed as a contract courier, delivering various parcels throughout Massachusetts. Although they were only slightly acquainted, Samson had heard that Matchett was a war hero, an 'expert' in the martial arts, and had a permit to carry guns. On that evening Matchett and Samson had dinner with mutual friends in a Boston restaurant. The gambling debt remained unpaid as of February 12, 1979. In the fall of 1977, the victim in this case, David Colvin, lost $1,500 in a poker game to Arthur Samson. We conclude that the firearms convictions should be affirmed and that the murder conviction should be reversed.

#Course hero c269 task3 trial#

Matchett challenges his convictions, claiming that the trial judge erred in (1) instructing the jury that a verdict of murder in the second degree was permissible by application of the felony-murder doctrine and (2) denying his motion to suppress evidence seized through a warrantless inventory search of his car. The defendant appealed, and this court ordered, on our own motion, that the appeal be transferred for direct appellate review. The defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment on the conviction for murder and was given concurrent sentences of three to five years for two of the firearms convictions and five to seven years on the sawed-off shotgun conviction. Matchett was also convicted on indictments charging him with unlawfully carrying a sawed-off shotgun, a. Colvin, was convicted by a jury of murder in the second degree. Matchett, indicted on a charge of murder in the first degree of David T. Ford, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. INDICTMENTS found and returned in the Superior Court Department on March 6, 1979.Īfter review was sought in the Appeals Court, the Supreme Judicial Court ordered direct appellate review on its own initiative.ĭaniel A. Was not a mere pretext concealing an investigatory motive. That the search had been for the purpose of making an inventory of theĬontents of the automobile pursuant to established police procedures and Properly denied, where the judge concluded on sufficient oral testimony

Warrantless search of a criminal defendant's impounded automobile was dissenting.Ī motion to suppress evidence obtained by police as the result of a Perpetration or attempted perpetration of the statutory felony ofĮxtortion, constituted error requiring reversal of the defendant'sĬonviction, where the jury were not also instructed that, to convict theĭefendant on this theory, they must find that the circumstances of theĮxtortion demonstrated the defendant's conscious disregard of the risk They found that the shooting of the victim had occurred in the Murder in the second degree on the basis of the felony-murder rule, if Instructions permitting a jury to find a criminal defendant guilty of The course of the joint enterprise which ended in the shooting of theĭiscussion of the origin and scope of the felony-murder rule. Victim and that either or both of them uttered threats to the victim in Sufficient to permit the jury to infer that the defendant and aĬompanion were engaged in a joint enterprise to extort money from the 492 OctoJBerkshire County Present: HENNESSEY, C.J., WILKINS, LIACOS, ABRAMS, NOLAN, LYNCH, & O'CONNOR, JJ.Įvidence at the trial of an indictment for murder, in which theĬommonwealth had proceeded in part on the theory of felony-murder, was