Your Shield Against Criminal Prosecution
A Suffolk County Grand Jury this past week returned indictments of Murder against Sherman Badgett, 19, related to the shooting death of Aaron Brown at the YMCA in Dorchester last August. Badgett is alleged to have shot Aaron Brown, 19 at the time, in the head outside a teen dance at the Dorchester YMCA on Washington Street. He was indicted…
Cristostomo Lopes, 20, and Joshua Fernandes, 16, were arraigned this morning in the Dorchester Division of the Boston Municipal Court in connection with the Sunday Murder of 14 year old Nicholas Fomby-Davis. At their arraignment, Suffolk County prosecutors alleged that Lopes and Fernandes both jumped Fomby-Davis on Bowdoin Street as he rode his motor scooter. Once off the scooter, prosecutors…
In reversing the Gun Crimes convictions of two men, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that police officers can no longer frisk someone during a routine encounter unless they have ‘reasonable suspicion’ to believe the person is involved in criminal activity and is armed and dangerous. In the case of Commonwealth v. Jamal Martin, that defendant had been convicted of…
United States District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbinia, in the Federal District Court of Columbia, recently applied the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller which created a constitutional right to have a gun. In Heller, the United States Supreme Court rejected a government’s ban on handguns along with a separate requirement that guns in someones home be…
In the case of Commonwealth v. Jason Loadholt, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled on whether a defendant’s criminal prosecution for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm and Ammunition is violative of a person’s ‘right to bear arms’ as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. In his appeal to the SJC for his Gun/Firearms Charges, the defendant claimed…
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s recent decision of Commonwealth v. Porter P., a juvenile, focused on whether a person temporarily staying in room in a homeless transitional center is entitled to a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ against unlawful searches and searches. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a 5-2 decision, ruled that they do! By way of background, the juvenile…
Brittney Smith, 22, was recently indicted by the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office in connection with the murder of 21 year old Justin Cosby, of Cambridge. Smith, a former Harvard University student, will soon be arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court on several criminal charges, including Unlawful Possession of a Firearm, Accessory to Murder After the Fact, Willfully Misleading a Grand…
On March 3, 2010, Edward Corliss, 64 of Roslindale, was arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court and held without bail, charged with Armed Robbery While Masked, Unlawful Possession of a Firearm, and the murder of Surendra Dangol while he was working at Tedeschi’s in Jamaica Plain on December 26. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office alleges that Edward Corliss entered the…
A defendant who was convicted for the gun crimes of Carrying a Firearm Without a License and Carrying a Loaded Firearm recently had his convictions overturned because the admission of the Ballistics Certificate, without live expert testimony, violated his Right to Confrontation under the 6th Amendment of the United States Constitution. At his criminal jury trial in the District Court,…
The Boston U.S. Attorney’s Office has reopened its investigation of the attempted mail bombing of Boston Children’s Hospital Dr. Paul Rosenberg. Amy Bishop, now charged with killing three other professors at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and shooting several others, along with her husband, James Anderson, are again named as suspects in that mail bombing. In 1993, Dr. Paul…