Occasionally, I’m asked by other criminal defense lawyers if I have any hesitation writing about or publicly approving of “prosecution wins” – cases where the defendant was found guilty. As a Massachusetts criminal defense attormey, the answer is no, I don’t: I don’t at all believe that truly guilty persons,…
In a major step forward in progress toward treating the opposite genders truly equally, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently handed down a sharply divided ruling in a case involving underage sex and statutory rape. The case involved consensual sex between a 14 year old high school boy and three…
In my previous post on this subject, I reviewed the case of a man who had been convicted of eleven (11) prior offenses of exposing himself to women and girls. Despite this history, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge ruled that, following his release from prison after serving a sentence for…
A very interesting case was recently decided by the Massachusetts Appeals Court, on the subject of “sexually dangerous persons.” The decision provided a clearer (and much needed) definition of just what constitutes a “sexually dangerous person,” and the state’s ability to incarcerate such individuals when they have not been found…
Sorry I haven’t posted anything in several days. I’ve been down with a bit of a summer flu, but hope you’ve been visiting, nonetheless. A major legislative effort has come to a head up on Beacon Hill, which would reform the current child rape statute by increasing the mandatory minimum…
Paul Shanley, a former catholic priest with the Archdiocese of Boston who was convicted in 2005 of the repeated rape of an altar boy in the 1980’s, has filed a Motion for a New Trial, challenging the validity of the evidence used to convict him in 2005, reports the Boston…