PROVIDENCE Xavier Vidot was 17 when authorities alleged he shot his mother’s boyfriend to death at the home they shared on Edgewood Avenue in Cranston.
When Vidot was 19, a Superior Court judge sentenced him to serve 24 years, plus a consecutive life term, in prison for second-degree murder in the killing of aspiring rapper Valdez Loiseau.
A lawyer for Vidot on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to overturn that conviction, arguing that the prosecutor impermissibly introduced expert evidence about gunplay in closing arguments as well as purported testimony from a witness who was never called to the stand.
“There is a man’s life hanging in the balance,” Ferenc Karoly said.