Commonwealth v. Festa

The defendant was indicted on March 6, 1974, for murder in the first degree of Adolph Abruzzese, and in October, 1974, was tried, found guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. His appeal is here under G. L. c. 278, §§ 33A-33G. He argues six assignments of error which will be treated seriatim below.

A jury could have found that on January 27, 1974, about 3 a.m., Abruzzese was shot in the head in his Malden home and that as a consequence he died on February 10, 1974, at a hospital. The defendant, accompanied by one Dolores Montanino, had left an East Boston bar…