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SJC

By adamg - 4/6/23 - 11:07 am

The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld the use of police body cameras to record voluntary statements of possible crime victims, in a case in which a man who was ordered back to jail on a probation violation in part because of those statements argued they violated the state ban on wiretapping - even though he was not involved in the recording. Read more.

By adamg - 4/3/23 - 1:33 pm

The Supreme Judicial Court acknowledged today that the state corrections commissioner made a very good case that Martin McCauley, 66, locked up for the way he murdered Carlos Madariaga in an alley off Gloucester Street in the Back Bay in 1981, isn't debilitated enough by serious mobility issues and constant, severe back and nerve pain to warrant medical parole. Read more.

By adamg - 3/28/23 - 5:18 pm

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a police officer who stopped David Privette not long after the robbery of a gas station one night in 2018 had enough probable cause to conclude he was a suspect even before he found him packing a gun and several hundred dollars in cash, and so prosecutors can bring him to trial. Read more.

By adamg - 3/7/23 - 12:53 pm

The Massachusetts Constitution lets citizens verbally confront public officials, even to the point of calling them Hitlers, and officials can't just kill the microphones to shut up angry people up at public meetings, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled today, throwing out a Southborough town bylaw that required "civility" at Town Hall meetings. Read more.

By adamg - 2/24/23 - 12:45 pm

The Supreme Judicial Court today ordered a new trial for Omay Tavares, convicted of a 2010 murder on Rosseter Street in Dorchester, because his attorney, leading his first ever murder case after serving a two-year suspension for "gross incompetence" that got two other clients imprisoned, failed to act on a document from prosecutors that seemed to another man as the killer. Read more.

By adamg - 2/17/23 - 12:46 pm

The state's highest court is considering the question of whether a hate-spewing lawyer ranting on Facebook can put aside his abhorrent beliefs when he walks into a courthouse and fairly represent somebody who is a member of groups he despises. Read more.

By adamg - 2/8/23 - 11:26 am

The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld a man's first-degree murder conviction that stemmed from some banter-turned-fight over another man's Yankee's cap at closing time outside An Tua Nua on Beacon Street in 2004, so he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Read more.

By adamg - 12/22/22 - 12:15 pm

The Supreme Judicial Court concluded today that "electrons" stored at a Cambridge data center and used to assemble Web pages and feed apps for a California auto-parts retailer do not mean the retailer has a "physical presence" in Massachusetts. Read more.

By adamg - 12/20/22 - 12:08 pm

The Supreme Judicial Court today ordered a new trial for a Kingston couple who had been awarded $3.5 million because their house and yard kept getting pummeled by golf balls from a neighboring course, ruling the judge in the case had bogeyed his instructions to the jury. Read more.

By adamg - 12/19/22 - 10:54 am

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that the state constitution does not allow a physician to help a terminally ill patient die, that, in fact, it could be considered a form of manslaughter. Read more.

By adamg - 11/22/22 - 11:33 am

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a man facing OUI charges can't also be charged with defacing a police lockup with a "noxious or filthy substance" for having urinated all over the floor and through the bars of his cell, because the law used to charge him was aimed at pre-Civil War anti-temperance protesters and they didn't hurl bottles of urine through windows at the homes of people fighting demon rum. Read more.

By adamg - 11/10/22 - 11:12 am

The Supreme Judicial Court today overturned a teen's gun convictions because the judge in the case failed to try to figure out what the jury foreperson meant when she approached him and said other jurors were throwing around "discriminating comments" during deliberations. Read more.

By adamg - 10/20/22 - 3:30 pm
From Web site in 2015

From Web site in 2015 via the Wayback Machine.

The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld the possible license suspension of a doctor who does hair-restoration procedures because his Web site made it sound like he was board certified in hair restoration, when there's no such thing, and said his center had doctors waiting to give people back their hair when, in fact, he was the only licensed doctor in the place. Read more.

By adamg - 10/20/22 - 10:26 am

The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld Bampumim Teixeira's two first-degree murder convictions for the stabbing deaths of Drs. Lina Bolanos and Richard Field in their condo in their home in 2017. Read more.

By adamg - 9/12/22 - 11:04 am

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that rules it issued in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic to temporarily halt statutory time limits on court actions are of no help to a contractor that kept suing the wrong corporate entities for payment for work it did to build North Station movie theaters - because the suit it also filed was largely based on the "mechanic's lien" it filed in the Suffolk County Registry of Deeds, which is not a court. Read more.

By adamg - 9/8/22 - 11:17 am

The Supreme Judicial Court today ordered records related to a Dorchester man's arrest on marijuana-possession charges in 2003 and 2006 permanently deleted from court and criminal databases, under a state law that allows for "expungement" of such records for what are now legal activities. Read more.

By adamg - 9/6/22 - 10:50 am

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Jose Martinez, now 61, will have to wait until 2025 to re-apply for parole for the life sentence he got for raping a BU student in Brookline, when he was just 16. Read more.

By adamg - 8/30/22 - 11:14 am

The Supreme Judicial Court had already ruled against an effort by Jim Lyons and the rump state Republican Party to block early voting, but today it released its detailed reasons for why the Republicans are wrong in so many ways, from their claim the Legislature has no right to expand early voting to their alleged fears of "zombie votes" by people who die after casting an early ballot. Read more.

By adamg - 7/29/22 - 10:42 am

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that state law requires police to get an OUI suspect's permission to have his blood tested before they can hand over the results to prosecutors. Read more.

By adamg - 7/28/22 - 11:23 am

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a western-Massachusetts man who says he was raped repeatedly in the 1960s by various Catholic Church clergy, including the then bishop of Springfield, can make his case to a jury that he is owed damages not only for that but for the way the church handled his case after he came forward in 2014. Read more.

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