Commonwealth v. Blanchard

Defendant was convicted of murder of the first degree and the jury fixed death as the penalty. The assignments of error on the present appeal relate mostly to alleged inadequacies of the charge to the jury in regard to the presumption of innocence, the character and force of circumstantial evidence, the probative value of confessions, the elements of second degree murder, and the sufficiency of the proof of alibi; there is also a criticism of what the trial judge said concerning the presumption arising from the use of a deadly weapon.

A careful reading of the charge reveals no such…