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Massachusetts Appeals Court Reverses Essex County Convictions as a Result of Sleeping Juror

Posted on September 7, 2014 in
When a criminal defendant elects to have a jury trial, there is an expectation that the jurors will be attentive during the trial.  But what happens when one of the jurors appears to sleep through the evidence?  The Appeals Court considered the issue this week in Commonwealth v. Luis Gonzalez. During the deliberations, the...
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Massachusetts Appeals Court Affirms Conviction of Man Who Wore See-Through Shorts to Target Store

In an entertaining opinion delivered last week, the Massachusetts Appeals Court considered whether a man had been fairly convicted of a crime for wearing see-through shorts to a local Target store.  The Court concluded, in Commonwealth v. Coppinger, that the law was constitutional and that the prosecution had provided sufficient evidence to convict the defendant....
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Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Rules that an Illegal Sentence Must be Honored if it is not Corrected Within 60 Days

Posted on August 31, 2014 in
What happens when a sentencing judge makes a legal error that benefits the defendant, and the error goes unnoticed for almost one year?  In Commonwealth v. Selavka, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled last week that too much time had passed for the sentencing judge to fix the mistake, and the defendant was entitled to...
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Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Rules Some Sex Offenders Required to be Monitored by GPS

The Supreme Judicial Court issued an important decision this week regarding the requirement that certain sex offenders on probation be monitored by a GPS device.  The opinion was delivered in Commonwealth v. Guzman (SJC-11483 decided August 25, 2014). (more…)
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Teacher Convicted of Possessing Child Pornography Allowed to Keep Pension

Posted on August 20, 2014 in
Ronald Garney was a ninth-grade science teacher and coach who worked for the Amherst-Pelham regional school district for more than 20 years.  Through an investigation conducted in 2004, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement identified Garney as someone who had purchased child pornography from a website.  Local police later executed a search warrant...
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