Diatchenko v. District Attorney for the Suffolk District

On the evening of May 9, 1981, Gregory Diatchenko, who was seventeen years old at the time, stabbed Thomas Wharf nine times as Wharf sat in his red Cadillac automobile near Kenmore Square in Boston. Wharf was pronounced dead at 10:40 p.m. A Superior Court jury convicted Diatchenko of murder in the first degree on theories of deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, and felony-murder (armed robbery). He was sentenced to a mandatory term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, pursuant to G. L. c. 265, § 2.2 On direct *657appeal, this court affirmed Diatchenko’s…