Commonwealth v. Bachman

The principal issue raised by this appeal is whether the failure of the defendant’s trial counsel to claim that the defendant was entitled to a statutory exemption (described below) constituted ineffective assistance of counsel that resulted in the defendant’s conviction, by a Middlesex jury, of forty-four counts of unlawful possession of firearms, rifles, or shotguns in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10(a).1 *758Because we hold that the statutory exemption was not available to the defendant under the facts presented, we affirm the judgments.2

The jury could have found the following facts. On…