Commonwealth v. Stewart

A jury in the Superior Court convicted the defendant of murder in the first degree on theories of extreme atrocity or cruelty and deliberate premeditation. The jury were instructed *528on both principal and joint venture liability and returned a general verdict. The defendant appeals from his conviction on a variety of grounds, which we discuss infra. We reverse the defendant’s conviction because a witness was permitted to answer questions without being sworn and because the same witness was allowed to answer “No comment” to leading questions that contained highly prejudicial information. We…