## Facts

- After a school dance, a high-school student hosted a party in Lowell, Massachusetts, attended by the victim, Charles McCullough.
- German Acevedo arrived with several friends; McCullough accused them of stealing his car’s headlights, prompting an argument and the group’s departure.
- Approximately forty-five minutes later, Acevedo and his friends returned, another argument began, and the host ordered people outside.
- Commonwealth witnesses described a one-on-one fight: McCullough (unarmed) punched Acevedo in the head; Acevedo appeared to punch McCullough’s chest; after about ten seconds McCullough fell back, grabbed his chest, and said he had been stabbed.
- McCullough sustained five stab wounds, including wounds to the heart and liver, and died from rapid blood loss.
- Defense witnesses described a chaotic confrontation: Acevedo tried to leave, could not access a locked car, then was rushed by McCullough, knocked down, and faced what he perceived as multiple attackers; Acevedo drew a knife and swung it at them.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence required a jury instruction on voluntary manslaughter based on reasonable provocation, in addition to self-defense and excessive-force voluntary manslaughter.
2. Whether the judge’s response to a deliberating jury’s question about malice and mitigating circumstances—limiting mitigation to excessive force in self-defense—improperly foreclosed reasonable provocation.
3. Whether the omission of a reasonable-provocation instruction created a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice and warranted a new trial.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court reversed the second-degree murder conviction and the order denying a new-trial motion, and remanded for a new trial.
- The court held that, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the defendant, a rational jury could find reasonable provocation supporting voluntary manslaughter.
- The failure to instruct on reasonable provocation, combined with the judge’s limiting response to the jury’s mitigation question, created a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.

## Legal Principles

- Voluntary manslaughter may be found where a killing results from a sudden heat of passion upon reasonable provocation, negating malice.
- Self-defense (and mitigation for excessive force in self-defense) is doctrinally distinct from reasonable provocation; instructions on one do not substitute for instructions on the other.
- In a murder case, when any view of the evidence would permit a rational jury to find reasonable provocation, the judge must instruct on that theory even if not requested.
- A judge’s supplemental instruction during deliberations must not improperly restrict the jury’s consideration of legally available mitigating theories supported by the evidence.
- Where warranted mitigation is omitted and the jury is affirmatively directed away from other mitigating circumstances, the error may require reversal due to a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.

## Conclusion

Because the evidence permitted a reasonable finding that the stabbing occurred in the heat of passion upon reasonable provocation, the jury should have been instructed on voluntary manslaughter on that ground; the omission, intensified by a deliberation response limiting mitigation to excessive-force self-defense, undermined the reliability of the murder verdict and required a new trial.


Commonwealth v. Acevedo, 845 N.E.2d 274 (Mass. 2006)