The Supreme Judicial Court recently issued a decision – Commonwealth v. Buckley – in which it “decline[d] to disturb [the] general rule” set forth in Commonwealth v. Santana, 420 Mass. 205 (1995), “that a traffic stop constitutes a ‘reasonable’ ‘seizure’ for purposes of art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights…
In Commonwealth v. Ortiz, the Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the suppression of firearms seized by the police from the defendant’s vehicle. The SJC specifically ruled that the defendant’s “consent to allow the police to search for narcotics or firearms ‘in the vehicle’” did not authorize the “officer to search under…
In Commonwealth v. Carlson, the Appeals Court reversed the defendant’s conviction because the judge erred in denying the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence of “the single-photograph identification procedure [employed by the police, which] violated the defendant’s rights under art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.” The background was as…
The Appeals Court recently reversed the suppression of a statement made by the defendant to the police upon his arrest in Commonwealth v. Barbosa. The basic facts were as follows: in the course of an investigation of “trafficking of persons for sexual servitude, G.L. c.265, §50,” the police dialed a…
The Supreme Judicial Court recently issued a decision in Commonwealth v. Holley, affirming the first degree murder convictions of defendants Holley and Pritchett despite (1) the lack of particularity in the warrant pursuant to which the police procured the defendants’ text messages from their cellular telephone service provider; and (2)…
In In the Matter of a Grand Jury Investigation, the Appeals Court affirmed the trial judge’s order directing the petitioner to enter his personal identifying number (PIN) access code into his Apple iPhone, and the subsequent judgment of contempt that the trial judge imposed on the petitioner for refusing to…
In Commonwealth v. Morin, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the defendant was entitled to a new trial on the indictment charging him with first degree murder, because his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to move to suppress the fruits of the search of the defendant’s cellular telephone by…
The Appeals Court recently issued a decision in Commonwealth v. Luna reversing the trial court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to suppress items seized during the warrantless search of his vehicle. The reversal was based on the ground that “the Springfield police exceeded their territorial jurisdiction” by conducting the search in…
In Commonwealth v. Arias, the Appeals Court reversed the trial judge’s allowance of the defendant’s motion to suppress and held that the warrantless entry by the police into the apartment building where the defendant resided was justified under the emergency aid doctrine. The basic facts were as follows. “[T]he Lawrence…
The Supreme Judicial Court recently issued a decision in Commonwealth v. Sullivan affirming the defendant’s conviction of first degree murder, despite the fact that testimony about an apparent match between DNA from the crime scene and the defendant’s DNA profile in the CODIS database should not have been admitted. The background…