In June 2019, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts issued an opinion in a Massachusetts manslaughter case involving the defendant’s failure to put her two nephews in age-appropriate car seats. The court ultimately reversed most of the defendant’s convictions, finding that the prosecution failed to establish the defendant’s conduct was…
During jury selection in a Massachusetts criminal trial, both the prosecution and the defense are able to ask the court to strike potential jurors from the jury whom they do not believe could be fair. These strikes “for cause” are unlimited in number. However, both sides are also given a…
Massachusetts government and law enforcement officials have introduced proposals in the hopes of expanding the limits of secret wiretapping. The reasoning behind the expansion is the purported goal of more easily gathering evidence against criminal suspects, such as with drug crimes. According to state Attorney General Martha Coakley, the current…
Many prosecutors in Massachusetts believe that potential jurors who watch crime television programs like CSI are prone to wrongfully acquit otherwise guilty defendants when little or no scientific evidence has been presented by them in a criminal case. Massachusetts prosecutors claim that this result which has been called the “CSI…
The recent case of Commonwealth v. DiPadova in Massachusetts demonstrates how extremely important it is for an experienced Massachusetts and Boston criminal homicide attorney to deviate from proposing a model jury instruction when the facts of the case necessitate a change from what is customarily used. In the DiPadova case,…