Commonwealth v. Berrios

This is the Commonwealth’s appeal from the allowance of the defendant’s August, 2001, motion for a new trial. The defendant was charged with being an accessory before the fact to murder,1 and other related crimes arising out of a *542gang-related shooting on February 28, 1995, in Springfield.2 On January 17, 1996, the date his trial was scheduled to begin, a plea bargain was reached, and the defendant pleaded guilty to being an accessory before the fact to murder in the second degree, thereby permitting him to be sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole in fifteen years.3

Withi…