On June 18, 2014, the Supreme Judicial Court clarified the scope of the “one-party consent exception” to the state wiretap law (chapter 272, section 99).  In Massachusetts it is illegal to secretly record an oral communication unless all parties to the conversation consent.  However, the one-party consent exception allows a law enforcement officer, or...

Two Massachusetts drunk driving accidents earlier this year show the potentially severe penalties awaiting those convicted of driving under the influence in the state. These penalties increase dramatically when a driver, passenger or pedestrian is injured or killed in an accident involving intoxication. A recent example involved Jay Franklin, of Upton, Massachusetts, who was...

Massachusetts’ Online Prescription Monitoring Program collects prescribing and dispensing information for prescription medications that are subject to abuse, such as painkillers and stimulants. The idea behind reporting is to prevent the same person from obtaining controlled substances from multiple sources and to track doctors and pharmacies that have a tendency to “overprescribe” potentially abusive...

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions recently regarding the legality of police searches which resulted from drug-detecting dog alerts and led to the arrest of a suspect. (more…)

Thanks to a shocking scandal involving the gross misconduct of a single chemist, crime labs around the country are finding themselves in a unique position: under the microscope of judicial, legislative, and social scrutiny. While the Massachusetts example only involves a single one of the state’s eleven forensic evidence-processing labs, the one in Jamaica...