Court Opinion

ID: 9535689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:51:57.530416+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:18.540764
License: Public Domain

Wilkins, J.
(concurring). I was not a member of the panel of this court that decided Commonwealth v. Smith, 403 Mass. 489 (1988). If I had been, I would have agreed with the court that alternate jurors should not sit in the jury room with deliberating jurors, but, in the absence of the defendant’s objection to the procedure there followed and in the absence of any showing of prejudice, I would have concluded that no reversible error occurred.
Because within the past year a majority of this court has announced that an error of this nature is reversible error and because the defendant in Commonwealth v. Smith has, therefore, been granted a new trial, I join in the court’s determination to reverse this defendant’s conviction and remand the case for *663a new trial. Consistency in the treatment of litigants calls for me to accept in this case the determination this court so recently made.