The federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) provides for an enhanced penalty, a mandatory minimum 15 year sentence, for felons possessing firearms who have previously been convicted of a combination of three serious drug offenses or “violent felonies.” Congress defined “violent felonies” in three ways: 1: crimes which have as…
Imagine you are at the airport, either about to get on or just having gotten off an international flight. While you are minding your own business, a Customs and Border Patrol agent comes up to you and demands to look inside the laptop bag over your shoulder. Perhaps this request…
The rapid liberalization of Massachusetts marijuana policy—including decriminalization of possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and legalization of medical marijuana—has had dramatic consequences for the Massachusetts law regarding search and seizure, offering even some defendants whose conduct has not become legal an unexpected avenue of defense. We have…
In Grady v. North Carolina, the United States Supreme Court unanimously decided that the government conducts a “search” implicating the protection of the Fourth Amendment when it monitors someone’s movements electronically without their consent. This ruling may have some implications for the government’s use of electronic surveillance techniques, but ultimately…
This is the second in a series of posts exploring the consequences for criminal defendants of an Act Relative to Domestic Violence, which the legislature passed and Governor Deval Patrick signed late last summer. That law created the new crime of strangulation or suffocation, which carries significantly greater penalties than…
In August 2014, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed into law An Act Relative to Domestic Violence. This law ushered in many changes in Massachusetts criminal law and procedure, which will be a topic of several blog posts here at bostonlawyerblog.com. In today’s post I will be addressing one of…
The Supreme Judicial Court today, February 27, suppressed a search that was triggered by police observing “about an ounce” of marijuana in a car they had stopped for a broken headlight (Commonwealth v. Sheridan, No. SJC-11543). Following the decriminalization of marijuana possession in small amounts (under an ounce) by the…
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) has issued extensive revisions to the rule governing criminal pleas, which will take effect on May 11, 2015. As I explain below, while the changes address a narrow issue, they impact criminal defendants because they further constrain what little judicial discretion is left in…
The Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable” searches and seizures, but what the courts consider “unreasonable” has evolved and shifted over time. One overarching trend over the last few decades is that police officers have been given significant leeway, and usually the benefit of the doubt, to stop and search individuals…
On January 12, 2015 the Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) issued an opinion in Commonwealth v. Gomes holding that from now on juries must be instructed on scientific principles regarding eyewitness identification, and drafted a provisional jury instruction for judges to give until an official model instruction is developed. The decision…