Commonwealth v. Michel

After the defendant’s convictions for robbery and mayhem were affirmed, see Commonwealth v. Michel, 367 Mass. 454 (1975), he brought a motion for a new trial alleging that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel at his jury waived trial because of pervasive conflicts of interest on the part of his trial counsel. In setting forth his claim Michel focuses primarily on the fact that a codefendant with conflicting interests, who became the Commonwealth’s main witness against him during the trial, was represented in the present cases by a law associate of his trial counsel and in other…