Commonwealth v. Nelson (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-072-14)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us SJC‑11337 COMMONWEALTH vs. LARRY NELSON. Suffolk. January 10, 2014. ‑ April 17, 2014. Present: Ireland, C.J., Cordy, Botsford, Gants, & Duffly, JJ. Homicide. Practice, Criminal, Capital case, Argument by prosecutor, Instructions to jury, Question by jury. Jury and Jurors. Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court Department on May 15, 2008. The case was tried before Judith Fabricant, J. Leslie W. O’Brien for the defendant. Teresa K. Anderson, Assistant District Attorney (Gretchen Lundgren, Assistant District Attorney, with her) for the Commonwealth. IRELAND, C.J. On January 26, 2010, a jury convicted the defendant, Larry Nelson, of murder in the first degree on the theory of extreme atrocity or cruelty. Represented by new counsel on appeal, the defendant argues error in the prosecutor’s closing argument and in the judge’s instructions to the jury. We affirm the defendant’s conviction and discern no basis to exercise our authority pursuant to G. L. c. 278, § 33E. 1. Background. The jury could have found the following facts. On October 12, 2007, Boston police officers, responding to a telephone call made from a resident of the victim’s apartment building, discovered the victim’s body inside his apartment. The victim’s identity was not immediately ascertainable because his body was in a state of decomposition. The victim’s body was on the floor in the front hallway about five or six feet from the main entrance. He was on his left side with his head toward the front door. His shirt was soaked in blood. There was a pool of dried blood underneath him, gaping wounds to his neck and face, and reddish-brown stains on the walls of both sides of the hallway. Emergency medical technicians arrived and pronounced the victim dead. He was sixty-four years of age. The victim had a total of twenty stab and incised wounds. He had six wounds to his head and neck, seven wounds to his torso area, and seven wounds on his upper extremities. The victim died as result of stab wounds to the head, neck, torso, and upper extremities, with perforations of the lung and subclavian artery, and associated hemorrhage. The medical examiner who conducted his autopsy expressed her opinion that the victim died within minutes from when his wounds were inflicted. The victim and the defendant knew each other. They […]