Justia Massachusetts Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree on a theory of extreme atrocity or cruelty. The Supreme Judicial Court vacated the judgment, holding (1) the evidence warranted an instruction on reasonable provocation, and counsel should have requested such an instruction; (2) the prosecutor committed error during closing argument; and (3) the cumulative effect of the prosecutor’s closing argument and trial counsel’s failure to request a voluntary manslaughter instruction based on reasonable provocation created a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice and required that Defendant be given a new trial. The Court gave the Commonwealth the option of either accepting a reduction of the verdict of manslaughter or having the conviction vacated and proceeding with a new trial. View "Commonwealth v. Niemic" on Justia Law

In 2008, Plaintiff commenced this wrongful death action as the administrator of the decedent’s estate alleging that Defendant’s medical care and treatment of the decedent was negligent and grossly negligent and that Defendant’s substandard medical care caused the decedent’s death. The jury found Defendant negligent in his medical treatment of the decedent and that his negligence caused the decedent’s death but did not find Defendant to have been grossly negligent. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding (1) Plaintiff met the basic disclosure requirements of Mass. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(4)(A)(i) to disclose the substance of and grounds for the opinions of an expert witness; and (2) certain materials obtained from the Internet and used during Plaintiff’s examination of Defendant did not qualify under the “learned treatise” exception to the hearsay rule adopted in Commonwealth v. Sneed, but the error did not result in undue prejudice to Defendant; and (3) the trial judge erred in precluding Defendant’s counsel from using one of the decedent’s prior medical records in his cross-examination of Plaintiff’s sole expert witness, but the error was not prejudicial. View "Kace v. Liang" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree on a theory of deliberate premeditation. Defendant was sentenced to the mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Defendant’s conviction but remanded the case for resentencing, holding (1) the evidence was sufficient as a matter of law to support the conviction; (2) the verdict was not against the weight of the evidence and was consonant with justice; (3) Defendant’s claim that his right to a public trial was violated by the closure of the court room during jury empanelment was procedurally waived; (4) the trial judge erred by not instructing the jury regarding the risk of honest, but mistaken, eyewitness identification, but the error did not produce a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice; (5) the prosecutor made improper statements during closing argument, but the prosecutor’s statements did not create a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice; and (6) in accordance with Diatchenko v. District Attorney for the Suffolk Dist., Defendant was entitled to a reduction in sentence to life with the possibility of parole where he was seventeen years old at the time of the killing. View "Commonwealth v. Penn" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was found guilty of murder in the first degree and related charges. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Defendant’s convictions, holding (1) when assessed through the lens of Commonwealth v. Adjutant, the trial judge did not prejudicially err in excluding both evidence of the victim’s and his friends’ prior violent acts and statements Defendant made to his girl friend; (2) the judge did not err in denying Defendant’s postconviction motion for discovery of gang-related evidence; (3) the judge did not abuse his discretion in refusing to instruct the jury on manslaughter on theories of reasonable provocation and sudden combat; (4) Defendant did not receive ineffective assistance of counsel; (5) certain remarks made during the Commonwealth’s closing argument were improper, but the improper remarks did not create a substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice; and (6) there was not basis for exercising the Court’s authority under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, 33E to reduce the verdict of murder to a lesser degree of guilt or order a new trial. View "Commonwealth v. Camacho" on Justia Law

Defendant was sentenced to committed time on a conviction. Defendant successfully moved to vacate community parole supervision for life and was resentenced to a term of probation. Defendant moved to vacate the condition of probation requiring GPS monitoring. The motion was denied. The Appeals Court affirmed. The Supreme Judicial Court granted Defendant’s application for further appellate review to address the propriety of resentencing Defendant by imposing a term of probation to run from and after committed sentences that either had fully been served at the time of resentencing or will have fully been served before the probationary term was due to begin. The Court affirmed the order denying Defendant’s motion to vacate the GPS condition of probation, holding (1) where a defendant sentenced to committed time on a conviction is resentenced to a term of probation, the new sentence violates double jeopardy where the defendant had already completed the original sentence on that conviction before the resentencing; and (2) where the defendant has yet to complete the original sentence on a conviction, resentencing to a term of probation does not violate double jeopardy provided that the total length of incarceration imposed on the defendant for that conviction is not increased. View "Commonwealth v. Sallop" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Defendant was found guilty of rape of a child by force and of assault with intent to rape a second child. The Appeals Court affirmed. Defendant appealed, arguing that the admission of evidence relating to a prior acquittal deprived him of his right to a fair trial and due process. The Supreme Judicial Court reversed Defendant’s convictions, holding (1) there was no error in the admission of the evidence on relevancy grounds; but (2) the collateral estoppel protections necessarily embraced by article 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights warranted the exclusion of the acquittal evidence under the circumstances of this case. View "Commonwealth v. Dorazio" on Justia Law

In 2008, Defendant was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder but was found not competent to stand trial until 2013. Thereafter, the Commonwealth filed a nolle prosequi with respect to the portion of the indictment that charged first-degree murder. Defendant filed a motion for a required finding of not guilty, which was denied. Defendant was subsequently found not guilty by reason of mental illness and ordered hospitalized. Defendant filed an appeal under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, 28. The Commonwealth argued that Defendant may seek to pursue an appeal only by filing a petition for extraordinary relief under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 211, 3 and that Defendant’s appeal does not lie under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, 28 because a finding of not guilty by reason of mental illness is not a “judgment” and Defendant is not “aggrieved” since he has not been convicted. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding (1) a defendant who is found not guilty by reason of mental illness may appeal under Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, 28; and (2) the evidence in this case was sufficient to support a conviction of murder in the second degree, and therefore, the judge did not err in denying Defendant’s motion for a required finding of not guilty. View "Commonwealth v. Bruneau" on Justia Law

Defendants were indicted on charges of unarmed robbery and assault and battery. Defendants both committed the offenses prior to their eighteenth birthdays. The Governor subsequently signed an “Act expanding juvenile jurisdiction” that extended the jurisdiction of the juvenile court to children who are seventeen years of age at the time of committing an offense. Defendants filed motions to dismiss, arguing that the Act should be applied retroactively to seventeen-year-old defendants who had criminal charges pending against them as of the Act’s effective date and that a failure to apply the Act retroactively as to such defendants would violate their equal protection rights. The Supreme Judicial Court held (1) the Act does not apply retroactively to a defendant who commits an offense prior to his eighteenth birthday for which a criminal proceeding commenced prior to the effective date of the Act; and (2) prospective application of the Act does not violate the equal protection guarantees provided by the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution and article 1 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, as amended by article 106 of the Amendments. View "Commonwealth v. Freeman" on Justia Law

John Doe was adjudicated a delinquent juvenile by reason of sex offenses and was committed to the Department of Youth Services. Defendant was later found to be a sexually dangerous person and was civilly committed for a period of from one day to life. Twenty years after Doe committed the offenses the Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB) classified him as a level three sex offender. Doe was later discharged from the treatment center based on the determination that he was no longer sexually dangerous. Doe brought this action contending, as relevant to this appeal, that the hearing examiner’s determination that he is a level three sex offender was unsupported by substantial evidence, in part because the evidence underlying the classification was stale where the hearing resulting in the final classification took place more than three years before Defendant’s discharge. The Supreme Judicial Court agreed with Doe and remanded the matter, holding that because Doe’s final classification was was not based on current evidence of the relevant risk factors, Doe was entitled to a new evidentiary hearing at which SORB will bear the burden of establishing Doe’s current risk of reoffense and dangerousness to the community. View "Doe, Sex Offender Registry Bd. No. 3839 v. Sex Offender Registry Bd." on Justia Law

John Doe, Sex Offender Registry Board No. 7083, was serving a criminal sentence and had been civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person when the Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB) notified him of its recommendation that he be classified as a level three sex offender. When a classification hearing took place in February 2012 Doe’s earliest parole eligibility date was ten months away and a trial on Doe’s petition for discharged was eighteen months away. Doe requested that the classification hearing be continued or left open. The hearing examiner denied the requests and classified Doe as a level three sex offender. The superior court and appeals court affirmed. Doe appealed, arguing that, by scheduling the classification hearing based on his earliest possible parole eligibility date, the information relied on by the hearing examiner in reaching a classification decision will have become stale by the time Doe is released from confinement. The Supreme Judicial Court vacated SORB’s decision and the superior court’s order affirming that determination, holding that, because the 2012 classification of Doe as a level three sex offender will not reflect an evaluation of his current level of risk at the time of his discharge from the treatment center, the decision classifying Doe as a level three offender is invalid. View "Doe, Sex Offender Registry Bd. No. 7083 v. Sex Offender Registry Bd." on Justia Law