Somerville brothers who admitted to frequent drug use have drug convictions overturned

The Massachusetts Appeals Court today overturned the drug convictions of two Somerville brothers who acknowledged they were hearty consumers of pot, cocaine and Ecstasy because a key part of the case against them involved certificates of authenticity on the drugs found in their apartment.

Massachusetts courts have been tossing drug and gun convictions based on those certificates ever since the US Supreme Court ruled last year - in a case involving a Boston man - that admitting the certificates as evidence without giving defendants the chance to question the experts who filled them out violated their right to due process.

Massachusetts courts have upheld drug convictions in cases where other evidence would have been sufficient to convict the accused. But while the brothers admitted to frequently firing up blunts sprinkled with cocaine and using Ecstasy as a "sex drug" (their defense against trafficking charges was that the drugs police found were for personal use), that was not good enough for a conviction even aside from the certificates, because the brothers did not specifically agree that the substances found by police were, in fact, the drugs in question:

The Supreme Judicial Court has indicated on more than one occasion that, short of a stipulation as to the nature of the drugs--which, by express agreement, conclusively establishes the facts contained therein--the Commonwealth is not relieved of its burden of proving the composition of the substances in question with properly admitted evidence. ... This is so even where the defense strategy is to concede possession and contest only the defendant's intent to distribute, and even where the defendant has conveyed through words or conduct that the items in question are drugs.

Complete ruling