Commonwealth v. Napolitano

The defendant, Mark Napolitano, was convicted by a jury of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and assault and battery on Jennifer Botto. He contends that his trial was tainted by two unpreserved errors that created a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice: (1) the trial judge allowed the Commonwealth to introduce damaging testimony regarding Botto’s out-of-court statements against him under the “excited utterance” (or “spontaneous exclamation”) exception to the hearsay rule, even though the statements did not properly fall within that exception; and (2) *550those…