Commonwealth v. Alves

After trial by jury, the defendant, who had been indicted for first degree murder and for unlawful possession of a firearm, was convicted of the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter as well as the firearm violation. He claims on appeal that the trial judge erred in three respects: (1) *797by giving a contemporaneous and unwarranted missing witness instruction directly after the witness, the defendant’s mother, failed to resume her testimony; (2) in giving a flawed self-defense instruction; and (3) by imposing a sentence that, for improper reasons, exceeded the Massachusetts…