Supreme Judicial Court

Supreme Judicial Court holds murder charges cannot be based on accidental killing of bystander in course of legitimate acts of self-defense

Published on: October 16, 2025 | by Noah Gillen

Massachusetts courts have recognized self-defense as a defense to homicide as far back as the trial following the Boston Massacre in 1770, where John Adams successfully defended all but one of a group of British soldiers who had fired into a crowd of protesters that had thrown objects at them. In all that time, however, Massachusetts courts had never definitively answered the question of whether the defense applies where in the process of defending oneself, a defendant kills an innocent bystander.

That changed on Tuesday, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court addressed the question in its decision in Commonwealth v. Santana-Rodriguez. The defendant in the case, Kenneth Jose Santana-Rodriguez, was at a salon with his girlfriend when her former boyfriend confronted him. Revealing a gun in his waistband, the ex-boyfriend stated, “You know what’s about to happen.” Believing “it was him or [the ex-boyfriend],” the defendant drew a gun and fired at the ex-boyfriend, but instead hit Trung Tran, a salon employee, who was killed.

In its opinion, the Court concluded that Santana-Rodriguez and similarly situated defendants acting in lawful self-defense cannot be guilty of first- or second-degree murder, but can still be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter if the prosecution proves that a defendant’s exercise of self-defense “was wanton or reckless so as to create a high degree of likelihood that substantial harm would result to an unintended victim.” In coming to this conclusion, the Court applied the concept of transferred intent to the self-defense context. Transferred intent is a theory of criminal liability that allows a defendant who attempts to kill one person, but by mistake or accident kills another, to still be criminally liable for the killing because their “felonious intent is transferred from the intended victim to the unintended victim.” In the self-defense context, when a defendant uses force to defend against an aggressor, but by mistake or accident harms someone other than the aggressor, the justifiability of the defendant’s use of force in self-defense carries over, or “transfers.” As stated in the opinion, the “intent follows the bullet.”

SJC Opinion Reverses Murder Conviction After Judge Fails To Adequately Investigate Possible Racial Bias On Jury

Published on: February 5, 2025 | by Tom Miller

The nineteenth-century French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville famously described the jury in the United States as “a free school which is always open and in which each juror learns his rights,” making it not only “the most energetic means of making the people rule,” but also “the most efficacious means of teaching it to rule well.” Unfortunately, the reality of juries is often somewhat more complicated. In particular, the risk of racial bias in jury deliberations has long been recognized, but efforts to combat it have run up against one of the most important features of jury deliberations: their secrecy. CONTINUE READING ›

Supreme Judicial Court Holds That a Switchblade is Protected Under the Second Amendment

Published on: September 10, 2024 | by Ana Muñoz and Niamh Gibbons

As we recently wrote, states’ firearms regulations have faced legal challenges across the country since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which held that individuals have a Second Amendment right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. But how does Bruen affect regulations of other weapons besides firearms? Last week, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) held that its logic governed whether a switchblade qualifies as an “arm” under the Second Amendment. In Commonwealth v. Canjura, the defendant challenged the Massachusetts switchblade ban. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 269, § 10(b) outlawed switchblade knives, defined as knives with a spring release device, as well as several other dangerous weapons. Violations of the statute are punishable by up to five years in state prison. In Canjura, the SJC held that the ban violated the Second Amendment under the two-part test the United States Supreme Court set out in Bruen. That means the switchblade band is no longer enforceable.

What is the Bruen test?

Under Bruen, the party challenging a weapons regulation must first show that their conduct falls within the plain text of the Second Amendment and is therefore presumptively protected. If the conduct is protected, the burden then shifts to the government to show that its regulation is “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of [weapons] regulation.”