A federal appeals court yesterday reinstated a jury's monetary damages against Joel Tenenbaum for downloading and sharing copyrighted music on various peer-to-peer networks - and ruled there is nothing unconstitutional about the law used to go after him.

The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston does not mean Tenenbaum has to fork over the money to Sony and four other recording companies just yet, however.

The court said it didn't object in general to district Court Judge Nancy Gertner's decision to reduce the award to $67,500, only that she was wrong to do so on the grounds it was so excessive it violated his constitutional right to due process. Instead, the appeals court directed Gertner to consider whether to reduce the damages under a common-law principal that lets judges reduce jury awards. The difference is that if she decides to do so that way, the companies could seek a new trial.

The judges expressed little sympathy for Tenenbaum, represented by Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, calling him a liar who knew that repeatedly downloading songs over several years was wrong - because everybody from his father to the RIAA told him to knock it off, and he didn't, even as he blamed everybody from his sisters to burglars for installing file-sharing software on his computer.

• Complete ruling, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, et al. vs. Joel Tenenbaum

Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley says a review of the arrest of a juvenile with outstanding warrants at Roxbury Community College last October shows police acted appropriately and used only enough force to bring the teen under control.

"It is my opinion that I saw nothing in the myriad of reviewed incident related materials rising to the level of excessive and therefore illegal force utilization," Gregory Connor, an independent expert on the use of force and now-retired professor emeritus of the University of Illinois Police Training Institute, who was hired by DA Dan Conley to review the case, said.

In a statement, Conley said the suspect, not named because of his age, "was resistant and assaultive" when officers tried to serve multiple warrants on him:

The investigation established that two Boston Police officers and one DYS apprehension officer approached the suspect, who was not an RCC student, at about 2:30 that afternoon as he walked through a campus administration building. When they attempted to remove his backpack and place him in handcuffs, he began to resist, grabbing hold of one end of the cuffs while an officer held the other end. The two struggled and the juvenile struck another officer just above the eye. The officers then brought the juvenile to the ground, where he struck his head on the grated floor.

At the point at which [the suspect] was prone on the ground and struggling with the officers, he had not yet been searched for weapons. Moreover, his backpack, which was within his reach, had not yet been examined. It was, therefore, entirely reasonable for the involved officers to fear for their safety as [the suspect] might have been armed with a weapon within his reach.

Additional officers responded to the arrest team's request for assistance. The evidence, including the video clips, established that the suspect continued to resist being handcuffed and would not allow his hands to be brought out from underneath his chest. One officer used a series of blows delivered from a shorter distance than a traditional punch as a distraction technique. The suspect continued to resist.

As more officers responded to a call for assistance, others took part in the arrest as well. Conley noted that one of them delivered a series of compliance and distraction strikes to the juvenile's leg, lower back, left side, and rib area. Though many of these strikes were ineffective, they were all consistent with the officers' training. They were delivered as the suspect refused to bring his hands out from under his torso and even kicked one officer off of his legs. Only one officer at a time employed strikes or blows.

The suspect assaulted officers during a lawful arrest and remained actively resistant when they attempted to take him into custody. These officers had a justified and reasonable fear that [the suspect] could have been armed with a weapon. The officers used a level of force proportional to [the suspect's] resistance and within Boston Police training and that of other police agencies nationwide. Therefore, no criminal charges against any police officers are warranted in connection with this case."

• Statement by Police Commissioner Ed Davis

The MBTA has installed a signal system at Ashmont that will keep Mattapan trolleys from leaving if a Red Line train is about to pull into the station.

T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the system comes in response to complaints from Red Line riders who would get out of their train just in time to see a trolley pulling away.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today authorities can't keep a serial North Shore exhibitionist locked up past the end of his sentence because there's no proof his behaviors trend toward the "sexually dangerous."

Essex County prosecutors wanted to keep Donald Suave away from the public even after he finished his latest sentence, something they could do with a declaration that he posed a sexual threat. Several months before Suave's latest sentence ended, in March of 2010, they filed a petition to keep him in custody; Suave has been held since then as the DA's request wended its way through the court system.

The state's highest court said that even though Suave seems unable to stop masturbating in front of women - he's been convicted eight times since 1986 and has admitted he's been doing it since he was 13 - he has never touched or gone after his victims:

Where the judge found no evidence that the defendant had ever stalked, lured, approached, confined, or touched a victim, that there was no reason to believe he would target children, and that there was no reason to believe the defendant's future sexual offenses would escalate into contact offenses, the judge should have concluded that, as a matter of law, the manner in which the defendant would likely commit a future "sexual offense," i.e., open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior, would not render him a "menace to the health and safety of other persons." G.L. c. 123A, § 1 (definition of "[m]ental abnormality").

We do not suggest that all sex offenders who have committed only noncontact sexual offenses and who are likely to commit only noncontact sexual offenses in the future are not menaces to the health and safety of other persons. Each case is fact specific. We can easily envision a case where the outcome might be different, based on the specific behavior of a particular defendant. We hold only that the findings made as to the manner in which this defendant has behaved historically, and the findings as to his predicted criminal sexual behavior, do not support a finding that he is a "menace" within the meaning of G.L. c. 123A. Because of the result we reach, we do not need to decide the constitutional question. The defendant is entitled to a judgment that he is not a sexually dangerous person.

• Complete ruling, Commonwealth vs. Donald Suave