On April 13, 2018, Governor Baker signed a law overhauling many aspects of the Massachusetts criminal justice system. My colleague Naomi Shatz recently covered the ways that the bill made pretrial diversion available to more defendants, and introduced a new program of diversion through restorative justice. Both of those programs,…
On Friday, Governor Baker signed a sweeping criminal justice reform bill into law, and because it contained an emergency preamble it went into effect upon signing. The law makes significant changes to defendants’ ability to get a pre-arraignment diversion — a way to resolve a case without any criminal record.…
On March 22, a decision by the Massachusetts Appeals Court made a small but significant change in the authority of District Court and Boston Municipal Court judges to screen out criminal charges that may have been improperly issued or legally flawed. In Commonwealth v. Moore, the Appeals Court held that…
In the recently decided Commonwealth v. McGonagle, the Supreme Judicial Court considered whether a Massachusetts statute that allows victims of crimes to recommend a sentence violates (1) the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights (particularly in light of the U.S. Supreme…
Robert McCoy was convicted of murdering his estranged wife’s mother, stepfather and son by a Louisiana jury, and condemned to die. He is currently before the United States Supreme Court (McCoy v. Louisiana, No. 16-8255), which will shortly hear argument on whether his rights under the Sixth Amendment were violated…
In addition to the many other changes contained in the criminal justice bills that have recently passed the Massachusetts House and Senate, criminal justice reform in the Commonwealth could include one additional significant change in the laws of evidence. The Senate’s bill includes a provision that would disqualify a parent…
Perhaps motivated by California’s legalization of recreational marijuana, which just became effective at the beginning of the year, Attorney General and longtime cannabis opponent Jeff Sessions recently issued a brief statement changing the Department of Justice’s approach to marijuana, even as support for marijuana legalization is hitting all-time highs. Over…
Over the last few months, the Massachusetts Senate, and then the House, debated and passed bills that would make significant changes to the state criminal justice system, ultimately resulting in a more flexible and forgiving system, with a greater ability for those who have gone through the system but subsequently…
One fall evening in 2009, four men met up at one Timothy Brown’s apartment. They had earlier been driving around together when two of them, Hernandez and Hill, decided to rob two women at gunpoint. Hernandez, who had brandished a gun during the robbery, hid it in Brown’s kitchen when…
For over 40 years, Massachusetts has had an avenue of pretrial diversion in criminal cases, which allows young individuals accused of less-serious crimes to avoid a criminal record. Specifically, defendants under age 22 with no prior convictions who are charged in state District Court (or the Boston Municipal Court) can…