Friday the 13th proved to be definitely not a good day for former Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran. The Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers (BBO) formally issued its long-awaited decision today, regarding the former Speaker’s future ability to practice law in Massachusetts. The 12-member board, eight of whom are lawyers,…
A Norfolk County Superior Court jury convicted Ryan Bois, 22 on Thursday March 12 of raping and killing his 6-year-old cousin, Joanna Mullin. The jury rejected his attorney’s claim that Bois was insane and “tortured by demons” when he committed the crime. Bois was found guilty on 10 of 13…
Here’s a sobering thought: A shocking one in 24 Massachusetts adults were either in jail or under probation at the end of 2007, according to a study released earlier this week by the respected Pew Center on the States. The report, entitled “One in 31: The Long Reach of American…
The Middlesex County District Attorney’s office scored a big prosecutorial hit earlier this week, with the conviction – on the second try – of a defendant who had been charged with a double homicide in 2006 in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Sean Fitzpatrick, 46, of (ironically) Freedom, New Hampshire, will never know…
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…
In my previous post, I commented on former Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran’s lobbying efforts to secure a last-minute presidential pardon for his guilty plea two years ago to federal obstruction of justice charges. On his way out of the White House door yesterday, former President George W. Bush…
Like so many of his predecessors in the office of the Massachusetts House Speaker, former Representative Tom Finneran left the office in disgrace, convicted of obstruction of justice in 2007. The purpose of this post is not to report this news, as it’s now a few days old, but to…
In my previous post on this subject, I reported on a brutal murder which took place in Hyannis, Massachusetts last December 15 2008. Aside from the savagery that marked this particular murder, what distinguished it from most murders was the fact that two of the three defendants charged with this…