Articles Tagged with #massachusettsappealslawyer

The Massachusetts Appeals Court recently reversed the conviction of a man who was found guilty after trial in the Cambridge District Court of gun/firearms charges, including unlawful possession of a firearm. Timageshe issue on appeal concerned the pre-trial motion to suppress challenge of the defendant, who argued that he was unlawfully seized and searched by police because they lacked reasonable suspicion to stop him.

The case arose in 2006 when a woman reported that her car was struck by a bullet as she was driving in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  At 10:50 p.m., Cambridge Police Officers met with the woman near the location where the shots were believed to have been fired. She told police that, immediately after the shots, she saw a group of young black males run into the courtyard of a housing complex. Notably, she stopped short of saying that the group was involved with the shooting of her vehicle, and she was not able to provide any descriptive information about the males she saw running. Continue Reading ›

A criminal defendant appealed his conviction for possession of a loaded firearm without a license after trial where he was acquitted of the “predicate” offense of unlawful possession of a firearm.  The Massachusetts Appeals Court held that a conviction on these verdicts could not stand because the crime of possession of a loaded firearm is a “sentencing enhancement”, which does not apply without a conviction for the predicate offense on the firearm possession.

In the case of Commonwealth v. Dancy, the defendant was with a group of people attending a festival in Boston’s Dorchester. Someone stopped a Boston Police Officer and told him that a man had a gun, and pointed to the small group of black males that the defendant was with. Police officers followed this group and noticed that the defendant was walking at a fast pace, suddenly slowed down near a vehicle and then hard a noise that be believed was a gun hitting the pavement. The police stopped the group, questioned them, and found a gun under a parked gun.  The defendant was arrested and charged with possession of a firearm without a license; possession of ammunition; and possession of a loaded firearm. Continue Reading ›

The United States Supreme Court reversed the murder conviction of a Louisiana man and granted him a new trial, finding that the the prosecutor had withheld evidence that could have supported his defense at trial that could have cast doubt on the credibility of prosecution witnesses. This case, Weary v. Cain, is notable because the SJC expanded upon the principle concerning violations of a defendant’s due process rights when the prosecution withholds material evidence.

Under the rule pursuant to Brady v. Maryland, the suppression by the prosecutor of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution. In Weary v. Cain, the SJC held that the defendant does not need to establish that “more likely than not” that he would have been acquitted if the withheld evidence had been admitted. Rather, the defendant claiming a “Brady violation” need only show that the evidence is sufficient to “undermine the confidence” in the verdict.

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The issue of the reliability of eyewitness identifications has been a hot topic in Massachusetts courts the last few years.  Several cases from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court have touched upon the danger of suggestiveness of eyewitness identifications, their reliability and consequently, their admissibility against defendants at trial.  Commonwealth v. Johnson, decided by the SJC on February 12, 2016, is yet another decision highlighting suggestive identification issues.

The Johnson case involved an issue where the defendant, prior to trial, moved to suppress (or exclude) the identification of him by the victim of a robbery because, he argued, it was made under circumstances that were impermissibly suggestive and therefore, unreliable to be admissible as an identification of him at trial. robbery  These issues are litigated in Massachusetts courts daily, and most often, it isn’t much of a big deal as far as the law goes.  But in this case, the major issue that sets this case apart from most others is that the impermissible identification procedure didn’t come from the police…

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The Massachusetts Appeals Court recently rejected the Commonwealth’s appeal from the suppression of drug evidence by the trial court, holding that the judge properly suppressed the drugs seized from the defendant because the Boston Police conducted an unlawful search and seizure of his person.

In the case of Commonwealth v. Johnny Evans, the defendant challenged the stop by the police and claimed that he was subjected to an unlawful search and seizure, despite the recovery of cocaine. The judge who heard the defendant’s motion to suppress agreed, ruling that the stop was unconstitutional, and suppressed the cocaine.

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