Commonwealth v. Griffin

In the late evening or early morning of July 23 and 24, 2009, the defendant broke into the house where his six year old daughter lived with the defendant’s former girl friend and slit his daughter’s throat, causing her death. A Superior Court jury convicted the defendant of murder in the first degree on the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 1, and of home invasion, in violation of G. L. c. 265, § 18C. 2 At trial, the defendant did not contest that he had killed the victim, but pursued a defense that he was not criminally…