Commonwealth v. Whitford

A Brink’s employee was robbed at gunpoint while making a delivery to the Jamaica Plain branch of The First National Bank of Boston in December, 1980. On June 1, 1981, the defendant pleaded guilty to three indictments occasioned by the event: armed robbery while masked, assault with intent to commit armed robbery, and conspiracy. At the request of the Commonwealth, sentencing was postponed pending trial of two co-conspirators. When it became apparent at the disposition hearings in October, 1981, that the judge intended to impose a ten- to twenty-year Walpole sentence, the defendant,…