Dagley v. Russo

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner Stephen Dagley was convicted in the Essex County Superior Court in Massachusetts of first degree murder and sentenced to a mandatory term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. After exhausting his state court appeals, petitioner filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition challenging his detention. He asserted that a prosecutor’s prejudicial misstatement during closing arguments, and the court’s subsequent failure to directly cure the misstatement, resulted in a fundamentally unfair trial and the infringement of his right to due process under the…