Colleges and universities are starting their fall semesters, and orientation for incoming freshmen is well underway at many schools. One area that is not likely to be covered in orientation is students’ rights in encounters with police. While most students go through their entire college career without interacting with police,…

In Concepcion v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court continued its support for sentencing discretion for district court judges. In this case, the issue was how much discretion a sentencing judge has when resentencing a defendant pursuant to the First Step Act, a substantial criminal justice reform act that Congress…

This week, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) issued an opinion in Commonwealth v. Lougee holding that its orders delaying trials due to COVID-19 allow the Commonwealth to hold defendants pre-trial beyond time limits set by statute. The decision applies to pre-trial detainees being held either on grounds of dangerousness…

In Kelly v. United States, issued this week—the so-called “Bridgegate” case—the Supreme Court once again limits the use of federal criminal fraud statutes to establish a standard of good government for state and local governments. As in McNally v. United States and Skilling v. United States, the Court in Kelly…

As part of the substantial criminal justice reforms enacted last year, the Massachusetts legislature gave a break to certain “first offender” juvenile delinquents.  It did so by narrowing the definition of “delinquent child” found in G.L. c. 119 § 52, which effectively divests jurisdiction from the Juvenile Court for such “first offenders”…

As we have previously discussed on this blog, the Massachusetts wiretap statute makes it a crime to “secretly record” any person without their consent.  The law has been used to prosecute and convict people who secretly record police activities.  In Martin v. Gross and Project Veritas Action Fund v. Conley, an individual and a public-interest organization challenged the…

The “First Step” bill now circulating in the U.S. Senate promises to make some changes to sentencing and imprisonment that would ameliorate harsh penalties and treatment.  However, it does not go far enough, and in some cases it actually takes a step backward.  There are multiple provisions, but I will…

In 2011, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (“DPH”) discovered that state lab chemist Annie Dookhan had tampered with drug samples and falsified drug analyses submitted to DPH’s Hinton drug testing lab in Boston, where she was employed as an analyst, and that the tainted results were then used as…

Marijuana has been in the news this summer.  Medical marijuana has been increasingly available in Massachusetts since it was approved, first by voters then by the legislature in 2012.  There are currently 36 medical marijuana dispensaries regularly providing marijuana to medical cardholders.  In the first half of 2018 well over…

Robert McCoy was convicted of murdering his estranged wife’s mother, stepfather and son by a Louisiana jury, and condemned to die.  He is currently before the United States Supreme Court (McCoy v. Louisiana, No. 16-8255), which will shortly hear argument on whether his rights under the Sixth Amendment were violated…