Brittle v. Commonwealth

Found guilty by a jury of murder in the first degree and use of a firearm in the commission of murder, defendant William Ray Brittle was sentenced in accordance with the verdicts to imprisonment for life and one year respectively. We awarded him an appeal from the July 1980 judgments of conviction, limited to consideration of one question: Did the trial court err in refusing to sustain defendant’s motion to set aside the verdicts made upon the ground that numerous photographs of the crime scene, not admitted in evidence, were examined and considered by the jurors during deliberations?

On…