On Oct. 17 2010, police officers in the town of Mount Pleasant, New York, shot and killed Easton resident Danroy “DJ” Henry, age 20, outside a bar at a shopping center in that town, not far from New York City. Henry was at the bar with friends, after attending a…
Just last week, I criticized Gov. Deval Patrick for his proposal to change the way public defenders are provided for indigent criminal defendants. Today, I want to do just the opposite: Commend him for another of his proposals dealing with criminal law. Specifically, Gov. Patrick should be lauded for his…
I have a very interesting case development to report today in the area of drunk driving in Massachusetts. As a Dedham, Massachusetts OUI/DWI defense lawyer, I’m often asked “What happens if a person is found by a police officer to be drunk and sitting in the driver’s seat of a…
Gov. Deval Patrick likes to fashion himself as a typical “man-of-the people” Democrat. Except that he’s anything but that, and knows very little about the everyday workings of the “average person” on the street. That should come as no surprise to anyone, given that he’s a multimillionaire who made his…
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled this week that foreign nationals, including illegal aliens, must be provided with the opportunity to be in contact with diplomats from their home country when facing criminal charges in Massachusetts. The court ruled that the right is guaranteed by the Vienna Convention, which is an…
Last Friday, a Hampden County Superior Court jury returned a verdict that a lot of people on either side of the gun control debate had been watching closely. Called informally the “Uzi Death Case,” the former Chief of the Pelham, Massachusetts Police Department, Edward Fleury, was charged with involuntary manslaughter…
Understandably, the members of the Massachusetts Parole Board are on the receiving end of a lot of anger, even rage, in the wake of the December 26 2010 murder of Woburn police officer John B. Maguire by a freed convict. By all official accounts, investigators say Domenic Cinelli fatally shot…
The conviction of a Massachusetts murder defendant was recently overturned by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, for a rather interesting reason. That reason centered on a suspect’s constitutional right to counsel while in police custody. The defendant, Jerome McNulty, was arrested by Salem police on the morning of March 29…
In my previous post on this subject, I discussed how the U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing the constitutionality of a statute passed by the state of California in 2005, to limit the sale of graphically violent, interactive video games to minors under the age of 18. Once again, the…
Each October, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS, in the legal community,) hears arguments on cases that it has announced earlier in the year, that it will hear. Last month, it heard oral arguments on a California law that sought to ban the sale or rental of violent…