Torres v. Dubois
Case Date: 04/28/1999
Court: United States Court of Appeals
Docket No: 98-1924
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For the First Circuit ____________________ No. 98-1924 PEDRO F. TORRES, Petitioner, v. LARRY E. DUBOIS, SCOTT HARSHBARGER, Respondents. ____________________ APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS [Hon. Reginald C. Lindsay, U.S. District Judge] ____________________ Before Torruella, Chief Judge, Aldrich and Cudahy, Senior Circuit Judges. _____________________ Brownlow M. Speer, Committee for Public Counsel Services, Public Defender Division, was on brief, for petitioner. Susanne Levsen, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Bureau, with whom Scott Harshbarger, Attorney General, was on brief, for respondents. ____________________ ____________________ TORRUELLA, Chief Judge. Plaintiff-appellant Pedro F. Torres ("Torres") filed this petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The sole issue before us is whether the jury instructions in Torres's state court murder trial violated his due process rights by impermissibly shifting the burden of proof. Like the district court before us, we find that the jury instructions did not violate Torres's due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, and we therefore affirm the district court's dismissal of the petition for writ of habeas corpus. BACKGROUND The events that led to the murder charge in this case are detailed in the prior decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ("SJC"). See Commonwealth v. Torres, 651 N.E.2d 360 (Mass. 1995). In brief, during the evening of December 14, 1990, the defendant and his sister went to visit an individual who resided in a second-floor apartment over the Harborview Caf |