Commonwealth v. Moore

During the early evening hours of June 6, 1985, Alfred Phillips, Jr., was stabbed to death in Boston. The defendant was arrested the following day and charged with Phillips’s murder. She was put to trial on an indictment that charged her with murder in the first degree and convicted by a jury of second degree murder. The only issue raised by the defendant on appeal is the trial judge’s exclusion of expert testimony offered by the defendant on the subject of the “battered woman’s syndrome.”

We first summarize the Commonwealth’s evidence as it relates to the issue. The defendant, age…