William D. Kickham
William D. Kickham
William D. Kickham
William D. Kickham
Justia Badge
Massachusetts Bar Association Badge
Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys Badge
The National Trial Lawyers Badge
American Institute of Personal Injury Attorney Badge
Super Lawyers
Avvo Raiting 10.0 - Top attorney

|

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) recently announced that, from July 20 2009 forward, judges will generally be required to issue rulings within 30 days of the completion of any civil commitment proceeding sought by the Commonwealth against someone previously convicted of rape or a sexual assault crime. On many occasions, when a person who has been convicted of rape or a crime involving sexual assault is nearing the end of his (or her) criminal prison sentence, a District Attorney’s office may seek a civil commitment of that prisoner, indefinitely, as a “sexually dangerous person (SDP)”. Prosecutors are allowed to do this under a specific statute, M.G..L. Chapter 123A, known among Massachusetts criminal defense lawyers as the “SDP statute.”

When a prosecutor moves for such a civil commitment, the District Attorney’s office seeking the commitment is essentially saying to a judge, “While this convict may have served out his criminal prison sentence, he (or she) remains a sexually dangerous person, and should not be released to the public, but committed civilly at a facility to treat sexually dangerous persons.” That civil commitment facility, by the way is almost always Bridgewater State Hospital. The court issued the ruling in the case of a man who had previously been convicted of child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child. Shortly before he was scheduled for release from prison in 2002, prosecutors moved to have him civilly committed to the Bridgewater facility. Superior Court Judge C. Brian McDonald heard the commonwealth’s request in 2004, but did not subsequently enter judgment in the state’s favor until 13 months later. In the meantime, the convict was held incarcerated at Bridgewater State Hospital.

The SJC affirmed the lower court’s decision, finding that sufficient evidence had been presented to prove that the convict in question, a Joseph Blake, was a “sexually dangerous person” and also that the 13-month delay before the judge issued his decision did not violate Blake’s due process rights. However, the court went on to rule that the delay was “unacceptably long.” Consequently, the court announced that henceforth judges must make decisions in sexually dangerous person proceedings not later than 30 days after the end of trial, absent “extraordinary circumstances.”

Continue reading

|

Here’s an interesting development occurring at the intersection of criminal law and the healthcare field: The state’s largest nursing association is organizing support and lobbying for a bill giving nurses special protections from assault and battery by patients under their care.

The legislation would put defendants found guilty of assault and battery against registered nurses while they are providing health care, in jail for a minimum of 90 days and up to a maximum of 2-1/2 years. Currently, Massachusetts law allows sentences up to 2 1/2 years, but no minimum sentence for simple assault and battery convictions (against a nurse or anyone). In support of this legislation, the Massachusetts Nurses Association cited a survey it conducted five years ago, which concluded that one in every two nurses was assaulted at work during a two-year period in Massachusetts. The association also claims that nurses are assaulted as frequently as police officers and prison guards.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Michael O. Moore, D-Millbury, was one of more than 200 proposed new laws covering a wide variety of criminal offenses, all of which were heard in a single day yesterday by the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee. Two Massachusetts District Attorneys, Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr., and Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, are both backing the bill for minimum mandatory sentences for assaults on nurses.

Continue reading

|

Drunk driving and other criminal charges have been filed against a 22-year-old Falmouth man who was allegedly operating under the influence of alcohol in last month’s fatal car accident on County Road, in Bourne, Massachusetts, according to police authorities. Jonathan Muir was charged in Barnstable District Court with motor vehicle homicide, motor vehicle homicide while operating under the influence of alcohol, two counts of causing serious bodily injury while operating under the influence of alcohol, operating negligently to endanger, operating under the influence of alcohol, speeding, and a marked lane violation, according to the Bourne Police Department.

Police allege that Muir was driving a 1984 Porsche when it veered off County Road in Bourne and slammed into a tree around 1:30 a.m. on June 29. The car crash killed passenger Cassandra Flynn-Rakos, a 21-year-old Bourne resident and nursing student at Fitchburg State College. Muir and two other passengers, Erica Pouler and Sonya Dangelo, both 21, of Bourne, were seriously injured in the car accident. Muir could face up to 15 years in prison and $5,000 in fines for the motor vehicle homicide charge while under the influence, according to Massachusetts General Laws, or up to 2 1/2 years for motor vehicle homicide. Muir, who moved to Falmouth from Meridian, Connecticut, allegedly has a history of driving infractions in both Massachusetts and in Connecticut, according to registry records from both states. Muir lost his license for almost a year for failing to complete a driver training course in Connecticut within the required time. He was ordered to take the course after being convicted of speeding and driving an unregistered vehicle in April 2007.

He ultimately finished the course, paid the fines and his license was reinstated in July 2008. Following this motor vehicle accident, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles immediately and indefinitely revoked Muir’s driver’s license.

Continue reading

|

By now, many readers of this blog know that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that people convicted of a crime have no constitutional right to DNA testing to prove their innocence, after they are convicted. What most people didn’t know until then, however, is that Massachusetts is one of only three states out of fifty that does not already have a law allowing people the right to try to prove their innocence, post-conviction, via DNA testing. The other two states are Alaska and Oklahoma. It’s baffling why Massachusetts, a state routinely considered progressive, has not taken any action on this issue.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, declared that prisoners don’t have a constitutional right to submit DNA testing after their convictions, even if the convict is willing to pay for the tests himself. The majority’s reasoning was that the court should not to “constitutionalize” this right, when states appear to be already taking care of the issue. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “a criminal defendant proven guilty after a fair trial does not have the same liberty interests as a free man.” As a Massachusetts criminal defense attorney, I find that reasoning very troubling, and take profound issue with this ruling. It is plainly misguided. However, the state legislature in Massachusetts should also be faulted for not having acted in the past to join the 47 other level-headed states in enacting a measure to ensure the constitutional right of a convict to offer DNA testing evidence after a conviction, in an effort to prove their innocence.

The justices could have embraced a nationwide solution to wrongful convictions, and they chose not to. Over two hundred years ago, the framers of the Constitution could obviously never have foreseen the arrival of DNA testing. Had they been able to, it’s unthinkable that they would not have guaranteed a man the scientific chance to prove his own innocence. The framers of our Constitution were thinkers who justifiably viewed the power of government to imprison citizens with guarded skepticism. If a scientific method exists that can irrefutably establish guilt or innocence, it’s plainly ludicrous not to allow access to it. It isn’t a stretch to assume that most convicts who seek post-conviction DNA testing are probably innocent. How many guilty people are likely to demand that the proof that convicted them, become scientifically unquestionable?

Continue reading

|

Readers of my blog know that I’ve posted previously on the horrific story of the beating death of young Nathaniel Turner, a 7 year-old boy from Alabama that came to live with his biological father, Leslie G. Schuler, near Worcester, for the summer. On June 21 2009 – Father’s Day – Schuler allegedly beat the boy so badly that he was left brain-dead. A truly horrific story. The alleged facts of this story call to mind the story of Haleigh Poutre, an 11 year-old girl who was also beaten so badly she was almost disconnected from life support at the request of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (formerly the Department of Social Services.)

Police said Schuler took Nathaniel to the emergency room on June 21, Father’s Day. The boy was unconscious, suffering from traumatic brain injuries, and was placed on a ventilator. Following a medical determination that the boy had been beaten, Schuler was arraigned last week on assault and battery charges. The boy was declared clinically dead last Tuesday, June 30 2009, after evaluation by doctors from the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center’s University Campus in Worcester and Children’s Hospital in Boston. Nathaniel was removed from the ventilator over the following weekend. His organs were harvested for transplantation.

Schuler was then arraigned last week on a murder charge, according to District Attorney Joseph D. Early’s office. Schuler was originally represented at his assault and battery arraignment by a public defender who reportedly is not on a special list of lawyers appointed by the state to represent defendants accused of murder. (That list is known as the “Murder List” at the state agency who appoints lawyers to represent indigent criminal defendants, the Committee for Public Counsel Services.) However, Schuler has since been appointed another lawyer who is on the “Murder List”, and that person is the same lawyer who represented the stepfather in the Haleigh Poutre case. Springfield lawyer Alan J. Black was named to take over Schuler’s defense. Black represented the neglectful stepfather in the high-profile Poutre case in 2005.

Continue reading

|

A long-suspected underboss of the reigning New England crime family has reached a criminal defense plea agreement with federal and state criminal law authorities, which will net him a 6-year federal prison sentence.

Federal and state law prosecutors and law enforcement officials announced yesterday that Carmen S. “Cheeseman” DiNunzio, 51, of Boston, has agreed to plead guilty to a variety of federal and state criminal charges, thus avoiding prolonged federal and state trials on those charges. If ending in guilty verdicts, those trials could have netted Dinunzio decades in federal and state prisons. Through this plea agreement, authorities secured the guilty findings they sought, secured prison time for DiNunzio, and sent a message to other crime family members that they too can be pursued.

With respect to the federal charges, DiNunzio pled guilty to charges of conspiring to bribe a state official in connection with a proposed sale of materials to a project related to the Massachusetts Central Artery Tunnel Project, otherwise known as the “Big Dig,” and for providing a $10,000 down payment on the illegal payoff. On the state charges, DiNunzio will also plead guilty in a separate hearing in Essex County Superior Court on July 8, 2009, to state charges of extortion, promoting an illegal gambling operation, and conspiring to violate state gaming laws in connection with his role in the ongoing mob-related extortion of local bookmakers. Authorities brought no charges involving violent crime, such as murder, assault and battery, or drug trafficking. These are common charges involving organized crime, along with extortion and money laundering.

Continue reading

|

In a ruling affecting a wide variety of criminal law cases in Massachusetts, especially drug crimes, the U.S Supreme Court has ruled that lab reports offered as evidence by prosecutors will henceforth require the in-person testimony of lab technicians at trial.

The landmark ruling had its origins in a routine Suffolk Superior Court drug prosecution taking place in 2002, and made its way all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In that Suffolk Superior Court trial, prosecutors sought to introduce lab certificates accompanying two batches of drugs recovered by police in the case. The defendant’s defense attorney objected, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that these types of reports fall within the “Confrontation Clause” of the U.S. Constitution. The Confrontation Clause requires the appearance of live witnesses against a defendant in a criminal prosecution, as the Court ruled in the 2004 case Crawford v. Washington.

The judge hearing the case at that time, then-Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Rouse, overruled the defense objection, and allowed the lab certificates to be admitted into evidence pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 111, Sections 12 and 13, which requires the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to “make … a chemical analysis of any narcotic drug … when submitted to it by police authorities … provided, that it is satisfied that the analysis is to be used for the enforcement of law.” Section 13 states that the “presentation of such certificate to the court by any police officer … shall be prima facie evidence that all the requirements [of section 12] have been complied with.”

Continue reading

|

How I wish I could write more of positive news in this blog. Unfortunately, as my law school professors used to tell me, “It’s bad cases that make good law.”

Along those lines, this next case illustrates the definition of murder in Massachusetts, and when someone is “dead.” Nathaniel Turner was a 7-year-old boy who by all accounts was a pleasure to be around. According to those who knew him well in his hometown of Eufaula, Alabama, the 7-year-old liked to stay home and play in the yard. In school, He was an excellent student at Eufaula Primary School, whose school principal Suzann Tibbs, now thinks of his smile: “The smile in the picture – he has it all the time,” she said of a recently-taken photo. He was raised by his grandmother Chrissy Taylor, from the time he was born. Now, it seems, that promising life is ended. Far too young, and far too cruelly. Nathaniel was declared “clinically dead” Tuesday June 23, 2009 by doctors at UMass Memorial Medical Center after he was allegedly beaten by his father, Leslie G. Schuler, on Father’s Day.

The 36-year-old Schuler now faces multiple charges, including several counts of assault and battery and assault with intent to murder. News sources, including The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, are reporting that Schuler allegedly slammed Nathaniel’s head into a wall on Father’s Day. It was reportedly the latest in a series of abusive acts that have occurred since Nathaniel was ordered by a court to spend the summer with his father. A Massachusetts Juvenile Court judge is expected to rule soon whether Nathaniel will be taken off of life support at UMass Memorial Medical Center University Campus.

Continue reading

|

As the Enterprise News made clear in an editorial last week, change begins with telling the truth. And the truth on this subject – the glaring truth – is that drug crime polices, both in Massachusetts and across the nation – have been essentially a complete failure, and a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars in law enforcement, prosecutorial and judicial resources.

The report I’m referring to, released Thursday June 18 2008 by the Massachusetts Bar Association, places the truth front and center. The report’s title: “The Failure of the War on Drugs.” This study, which is the result of more than a year’s work by a task force of respected lawyers, law enforcement and mental health professionals, comes to the conclusion that state politicians have almost universally ignored: Massachusetts’ drug laws and policies, like so many other states, are “wasteful, ineffective and cruel.” As a Massachusetts drug offenses lawyer, I can attest to the accuracy of that conclusion.

Among the task force’s findings:

Continue reading

|

Here’s an interesting story about Massachusetts crime, which features (among other Massachusetts communities) a Cape Cod town near and dear to me, and where I own property: Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

It seems that without much public knowledge, and under the radar, several communities in Massachusetts that are not exactly known as hotbeds of criminal activity, have received high-powered and high-tech assault rifles and combat weapons from the U.S..military. Few people would question the need for or wisdom of having such weapons in large, urban police departments like Boston, Lawrence, Brockton or Springfield (not to disparage those communities, just to note that they are large urban cities that have seen more than their share of urban violence and gang warfare.) However, the sleepy summer resort community of Wellfleet, and the upscale town of Belmont?

Those towns aren’t alone in quietly receiving such assault weapons, either: At least 82 local police departments in Massachusetts have obtained more than 1,000 assault/combat weapons over the last 15 years, under a little-known federal program that distributes surplus guns from the U.S. military. At Salem State College, where recent police calls have included false fire alarms and a goat roaming the campus, school police received two M-16 military assault rifles. In West Springfield, police acquired even more powerful weaponry: two military-issue M-79 grenade launchers.

Continue reading
Contact Information
Westwood
119 Fisher Street Suite 1
Westwood, MA 02090
Phone: 781-320-0062Mobile: 617-285-3600 Fax: 1-617-977-5800 [Must include "1" when sending faxes]

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2024, William D. Kickham
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design