The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Manuel Andrade, now 47, deserves the sentence of life without possibility of parole he got for starting the shootout outside a Geneva Avenue house party that left a 22-year-old woman visiting from Kentucky dead of a gunshot wound to the head. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Edwin Alemany got a fair trial and will spend the rest of his life in prison for stabbing and strangling Amy Lord to death in Stony Brook Reservation - and for attacking two other women - in 2013. Read more.
Police can't use stored body-camera video collected inside a home in one case as evidence to arrest somebody in another case without first getting a warrant to search it, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled today. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today said a man on involuntary commitment to Bridgewater State Hospital has to be transferred to a less restrictive state mental hospital and that the state Department of Corrections can't simply disregard a judge's order to do so. Read more.
A registered nurse pursued by an angry woman who tagged Children's Hospital in a Facebook rant after learning the nurse had gotten a job there can continue her suit against the hospital under a state law intended to protect victims of domestic violence and harassment, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled today. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today vacated the first-degree murder convictions of Antwan Carter and Daniel Pinckney, who had been tried for shooting a man simply trying to get his keys out of his locked car as the two allegedly roamed a rival gang's territory in 2007 looking to avenge the earlier shooting of one of their pals. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today pointed to breakthrough delta-variant cases and ruled that judges can no longer automatically discount past infection or vaccination in deciding whether inmates and people awaiting trial are eligible for a potential release for Covid-19-related health reasons. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld Charlie Brea's first-degree murder conviction for shooting a man to death during a fight he wasn't initially a part of outside the Breezeway on Blue Hill Avenue in 2010, ruling that even discounting mistakes by the judge and the prosecutor at trial, the evidence was just too overwhelming and the jury would have convicted him anyway. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld the second-degree murder convictions of two gang members for the shooting death of a rival gang member out on a snow-shoveling detail after one of the 2015 blizzards. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a man who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for a triple shooting when he was 17 should get an immediate parole hearing on the lesser charges that are keeping him behind bars even after he was paroled on the murder charge. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled yesterday that a man convicted of fatally shooting Nicholas Fomby-Davis, 14, on Bowdoin Street - as his friend held the teen - got a fair trial and that police did nothing wrong in the way they questioned him, but that his sentence should be amended to allow for the possibility of parole because he was only 16 at the time. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that blackjack players who won at the cheap tables at the Encore and MGM Springfield casinos, then sued to get the higher winnings they would have gotten at higher-stakes tables, should have quit while they were ahead. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today dismissed Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone's lawsuit against a New York blog and one of its writers under the state wiretap law, because the guy asked if he could record a phone "interview" with Curtatone, and the wiretap law only bars "secretly" recorded conversations. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a man who rented out his Lynnfield mansion to people who then threw a massive party that ended with a guest shot to death was not negligent, in part because he wasn't there and had given control of the property over to the five men who'd rented the place. Read more
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a man's text messages can be used against him in a criminal case because they were recovered from another man's phone. Read more.
A man convicted of trying but failing to kill another man in a car at Quincy Street and Baker Avenue in Dorchester in 2015 will get a new trial because prosecutors used speed data from the GPS device strapped to his ankle - a condition of his parole on a federal drug charge - without proving that the GPS system was actually reliable for seeing how fast he was moving before and after the shooting. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that holding key court hearings via Zoom in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic is constitutional - but that a man facing criminal charges who agrees to waive his speedy-trial rights can decide to wait until he can have a hearing on evidence in person. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Facebook has to comply with requests from the Massachusetts Attorney General's office on specific applications and companies that may have sucked out more personal information from user than they should have - but also said a judge will have to review hundreds, if not thousands, of documents to make sure none of the information could reveal any of the discussions by Facebook employees and lawyers on how to collect the data. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today overturned the first-degree murder conviction of a man who got into an argument that ended when another guy shot at him and wound up killing a woman standing a block away before the start of the J'Ouvert parade on Blue Hill Avenue in August, 2014. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Cambridge has to pay the owner of a long abandoned and boarded-up apartment building $3.7 million even as he continues to fight to get the property back, under a state eminent-domain law drafted with the acknowledgement of the "sudden and heavy financial burdens" such land takings can have on property owners. Read more.
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