Commonwealth v. Marvin

The defendant’s appeal, which we transferred here on our own motion, raises a single question arising from a judge’s denial of the defendant’s request that he be permitted to present a closing argument at his probation revocation hearing. The claim is that the denial violated the defendant’s right to due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment *292to the Constitution of the United States and art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.

The Sixth Amendment right to counsel includes a defendant’s right to make a closing argument in a criminal trial. See Herring v. New York, 422 U.S.…