As the Boston Globe has reported, recent high-profile accidents in the Boston area caused by elderly drivers, has raised a lot of discussion about the subject of elderly drivers in this state. Seven people were recently injured in Plymouth after a car driven by a 73-year-old woman jumped a curb…
In my previous post on this topic, I noted that the Massachusetts Appeals Court has recently handed down a decision that changes the way the state Sex Offender Registration Board (SORB,) determines whether or not someone previously convicted of a sex offense, must continue to register as a sex offender…
Sex offenses in Massachusetts, or anywhere, elicit a strong reaction on the part of the public and the media – and understandably so. This is especially true when the offenses involve children or the vulnerable – again, with good reason. Wisely, we in Massachusetts (and other states also) have enacted…
According to internet safety experts and many public policy officials, teens increasingly face the possibility of becoming registered sex offenders for sending sexually explicit images of themselves (or others) over the Internet and their cell phones. More and more schools and parents have discovered that their teenage sons and daughters…
In my previous post on this story, I said I’d explain more what the insanity defense is and isn’t. Aside from the possibility that this defendant may have committed two murders over 23 years ago and had been walking around scott-free until this parental kidnapping charge, this whole story doesn’t…
I thought awhile about posting something on the Clark Rockefeller trial here in Boston. (I posted previously about this case, and recently considered that perhaps I should omit further attention to it.) Part of me says that this is an overblown, media-driven case that is no different from dozens of…
In my previous post on this subject, I discussed the recent Supreme Judicial Court ruling that persons found to be in illegal possession of a firearm in Massachusetts can no longer be held in jail prior to trial, based on the grounds that such persons present a danger to the…
In a classic liberal-conservative split, a recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruling has held that persons who are found to be in illegal possession of a gun or firearm cannot be held in jail pending trial. The ruling is important because many such defendants have been held pending trial,…
The Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) handed down a very interesting ruling recently, that will widely impact how suspects who are accused of sex crimes can be monitored when they are on release pending trial. The court recently ruled that suspected sex offenders cannot be ordered by a judge to wear…
In my previous post on this subject, I discussed how circumstantial evidence obtained by police can still be used to charge a suspect with murder, even though there are no direct eyewitnesses to the killing. But why is the charge “murder” here, and not something lesser? Technically, Markoff is being…