Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Offenses

Living in Massachusetts can be, during winter, a challenge to say the least.  It’s cold enough here to snow from about early November to early April.  For skiers and winter sports enthusiasts, it’s Heaven.  For me and a lot of people here, it’s more like Hell (freezing over).  The injuries that can be attributed to snow & ice are numerous – and despite what some people might think, the consequences aren’t limited to a scrape or a sprained limb.  The consequences can be death, or worse.

We were reminded of that just a few days ago, when a New Hampshire driver, 22-year-old Michael Conry of Londonderry, N.H., was very seriously injured when a large chunk of ice and snow flew off a vehicle in front of him, came crashing through his windshield, and almost killed him.  Take a look at these photos

According to police reports, Conry suffered very serious injuries to his face and required several surgeries to remove numerous pieces of glass from both of his eyes.  The driver of the truck who failed to remove that snow and ice now faces criminal charges under “Jessica’s Law” in New Hampshire, named after a woman who was killed when a nine-foot piece of ice fell off a truck and collided with her vehicle.  Despite efforts to raise public awareness of this threat, many drivers in several states just don’t get the message about the importance of removing snow & ice from their vehicle before hitting the road.

A friend of mine and I were recently talking about our hope that the economy can be re-opened again – and soon.  One of the things he said to me was, “Yeah – I haven’t been able to hit the open road and hit the gas for a while.”  As a Massachusetts lawyer who represents clients who have been charged with, among other things,  motor vehicle offenses, I’m sure you can imagine what my response was.

Business shut-downs, stay-at-home orders, quarantines, and working remotely from home have all combined to create a kind of “mass cabin fever”.  That term, of course, originated from people being trapped in cabins during severe winter snowstorms.  Even under harsh winter conditions, people want to get outside after a few days.  But here it is, Memorial Day weekend — and we haven’t all been stuck inside for just a few days — it’s been a few months.  So the desire to hit the road is understandable – but if it’s done in a reckless, dangerous or illegal way, legal trouble could likely follow.  Criminal offenses for such operation include:

• Operating After License Suspension or License Revocation

Most of my time as a Massachusetts criminal defense attorney is spent on defending very serious charges, such as Massachusetts sexual assault charges, Massachusetts domestic violence charges, Massachusetts larceny charges, Massachusetts drug charges, and more.  But life here in Massachusetts can be made miserable on a legal level in more ways than being arrested for a very serious criminal offense.  To illustrate, I’ll open this post with this news excerpt: “Federal prosecutors say troopers from a troubled State Police unit had a quota system for issuing tickets to motorists, a practice that state courts have deemed unconstitutional and agency officials have repeatedly denied exists.  Members of the now-disbanded Troop E were expected to issue at least eight citations during their shifts under a specialized overtime program, which dozens of troopers allegedly abused to collect fraudulent overtime, according to prosecutors.”

This excerpt, from a news story in the Boston Globe, pretty much sums up the background of this post:  For many years, despite evidence to the contrary, the Massachusetts State Police has denied that they in any way had a quota system for motor vehicle citation that troopers were expected to meet.  Sorry – that was a lie.  In the wake of the state police overtime scandal last year, in which The Globe and other news media outlets revealed massive and shocking abuses in overtime pay for state troopers, it has now come to light that Massachusetts state troopers did, indeed, operate under a hidden quota system for Massachusetts motor vehicle violations.  This means that thousands of drivers over the years were cited and fined for “violations” that they were not responsible for.

Making matters even worse?  The troopers who regularly met these unwritten ‘quotas”, were rewarded for it.  How?  With the ultimate prize in the state police system:  Generous overtime shifts, which paid enormous sums of money, and went routinely un-challenged by the state agency responsible for paying them.  Some state troopers made as much as $300,000 in one year – most of it through very lucrative overtime shifts.  And the state police department was not the only police department engaged in this practice – several local departments were, also.  The Lowell Sun reported in 2015 that police officers in Dracut revealed that that department also had a quota system.  Officers in the towns of Abington and Sutton even sued their employers after they were retaliated against for complaining about such a system.

As a Dedham, Massachusetts motor vehicle violations lawyer, I’ve been watching the Haverhill District Court trial of Aaron Deveau, age 18. Deveau was on trial for Motor Vehicle Homicide By Negligent Operation, following the February 2011death of a man, Daniel Bowley of New Hampshire, in a car crash that police and investigators say was caused because Deveau was texting while driving. Actually, there were two separate criminal counts against Deveau: Negligent Motor Vehicle Homicide, and Texting while Driving.

It is the Texting While Driving charge that has generated all the attention, because it is the first criminal prosecution of the state’s relatively new law that went into effect in September 2010, which bans teens from texting while driving. Known as the Safe Driver Law, the law was enacted to deal with the growing prevalence of teenage drivers who are tethered to their cell phones and smart phones, many of whom think nothing of texting while driving. In essence, the Commonwealth was linking the two counts causally, saying that the Negligent Motor Vehicle Homicide occurred because Deveau was texting while driving. The texting while driving law prohibits any Junior Operator from using any type of mobile communications device, whether to text or phone, while driving. Penalties for this offense are:

• 1st offense: $100 fine, 60 day license suspension, & attitudinal course

As a Boston/Dedham motor vehicle violations lawyer, I caution my clients all the time about how important it is to practice driver safety. There is no more worse sound than that of steel and glass from one vehicle hitting another with powerful impact.

In Everett yesterday, the air was filled with not one but two car crashes. A Revere man is being charged with four different counts of Massachusetts driving violations. They are: Driving after license suspension in Massachusetts; Driving an unregistered vehicle in Massachusetts; Failing to stop for police in Massachusetts; and being a Habitual Traffic Offender in Massachusetts.

The man in question, Jorge Palma of Revere, is being charged with allegedly rear-ending a State Police cruiser in Revere, early this morning, Sunday, May 27th. Apparently Mr. Palma hit the cruiser, then attempted to flee the scene, only, moments later, to hit a second car. The incident in question occurred on Route One in Revere.

This isn’t exactly breaking news, but it’s something worth reminding my readers of. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) recently handed down a ruling on a challenge to the state imposing a fee to get a hearing on a motor vehicle offense or traffic violation.

Drivers seeking to appeal a citation in front of a Clerk-Magistrate have been charged a $25.00 fee since July 1, 2009. If the hearing results in an adverse finding and the driver wishes to appeal the Clerk’s finding to a District Court judge, there is an additional $50.00 fine. Prior to July 1 2009, drivers could secure a hearing before a Clerk-Magistrate for free, and appeals to a judge after a Clerk’s hearing cost only a $20 fee. The state imposed the new fees as part of a sweeping set of new “revenue-enhancement” measures in 2009. (Translation: New taxes.) A lawyer challenged the new hearing fees, arguing that the fees violated his constitutional right to equal protection. He argued an equal protection violation due to the fact that people who contest traffic violations are treated differently from people contesting other civil infractions, such as tickets for smoking in public places and for possession of an ounce of marijuana or less.

Unfortunately, the SJC ruled that drivers who challenge traffic tickets enjoy “significantly greater” procedural safeguards than people who challenge other civil violations, and hence the court found no equal protection violation. These greater procedural protections include the right to subpoena witnesses, the right to be heard by a Clerk-magistrate, and the right to a new hearing before a judge, if the violator is found against by a clerk-magistrate. Justifying the fee, the SJC wrote that these safeguards impose “greater demands on the resources of the District Court,” that approximately 700,000 drivers are cited each year for civil vehicular traffic violations, that approximately 200,000 of those drivers seek hearings, and that those increased administrative demands justify the fees.