Something made the local (and some national) news earlier this week, that has to stand out as one of the most shocking, ridiculous overreactions from school officials I have ever seen. This past Wednesday, March 22, a 5-year-old boy at the Central School kindergarten in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, was standing in…
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) issued a major ruling this week, clarifying the type of “romantic”, or dating, relationships that can qualify for the issuance of an Abuse Prevention Order, (“Restraining Order,”) otherwise known legally in Massachusetts as a “209A Order.” 209A refers to the originating statute, Massachusetts General…
This post is written to remind everyone that we are all vulnerable to someday getting into trouble with the law – even some of us that you would be least likely to suspect. As a Dedham, Mass., DUI lawyer, let me share with you an interesting development. Right now there…
Getting arrested on a Massachusetts DUI charge is costly on many levels: Legal, financial, social, professional, and personal. No one wants to go through this. Trust me. To avoid a situation where you might get behind the wheel after having a drink, innocently thinking that you are nowhere near the…
Here’s another example of “creative sentencing,” a judicial approach to punishing criminal defendants that doesn’t rely on the “traditional” penalties of fines and incarceration. Alternative, or creative, sentencing is growing in popularity across the country, and here in Massachusetts, also. And it isn’t limited to just adult defendants. Here in…
The world lost a brilliant mind a week ago today, when Aaron Swartz, the 26 year-old internet prodigy who at age 14 invented the ubiquitous internet feed RSS, as well as internet company Reddit, took his own life. Swartz was no “average person,” but an internet prodigy and genius who…
Let’s start the new year off with something unusual. There’s a saying, “You do the crime, you do the time.” But sentencing criminal defendants who have either been found guilty after a trial, or who have pled guilty in lieu of a trial, has begun to change in recent years.…
Whether you know it or not, your smartphone just got a lot smarter – for police departments and prosecutors, that is. In an important ruling released on Wednesday of this week, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled that police officers can conduct a limited search of an arrested person’s cell…
Surrounding all of the very necessary legal reactions to the scandal surrounding the Massachusetts state drug lab – centrally, the need to ensure that defendants who were convicted through drug samples handled by lab suspect Annie Dookhan receive the necessary legal review of their cases – one glaring omission seems…
As a Norfolk County, Massachusetts criminal defense lawyer, a lot of people have asked me my opinion about an especially loathsome criminal convict who has re-emerged in the news lately, Charles Jaynes. If you don’t know who he is, or why he is making news right now, here’s a recap.…