Commonwealth v. Issa

A Superior Court jury convicted the defendant of murder in the first degree on a theory of deliberate premeditation, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 1, for the killing of Maryse Antoine (victim), the mother of his young daughter.2 The defendant raises four issues on appeal. First, he claims that the trial judge erred in allowing the prosecutor to exercise a peremptory challenge of the only African-American male who remained in the venire without determining that the prosecutor had a bona fide group-neutral reason for the challenge, and thereby denied him his State and Federal constitutional…