Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog
Good morning! It’s Tuesday of a new week, and you know what that means… time for the weekly snow storm!
As I’m sure you have noticed, we have been getting a lot of snow lately. This takes effect in terms of criminal justice in various ways. Let’s look at two particular areas which could bring law enforcement to your front door.
Eric Megna, 18, hereinafter, the “Defendant”, is still paying for something that happened even before we knew the winter was going to be full of hazards. He has recently been indicted for his alleged connection to an automobile accident back in October. Of course, the Defendant is said to have taken the bad situation of the accident and making it worse. He is also charged with leaving the scene. A 58-year-old man on a bicycle was struck in that accident.
That man died from injuries sustained in the crash.
Meanwhile Cambridge police are still searching for a man who showed some rather bizarre behavior this past Saturday.
Bizarre, yes. But also violent behavior. The Massachusetts assault and battery type of behavior.
Law enforcement says that the man (hereinafter, the “Suspect”) attacked three people without warning, “sucker-punching” each one in the head, along Massachusetts Avenue. One of those hit wound up in the hospital.
The suspect is described as a tall black male in his 20s. He was caught on video surveillance wearing a black winter coat, jeans, knit hat, hooded sweatshirt and a backpack as he left a furniture store.
Deputy Superintendent Jack Albert, a Cambridge police spokesman, has indicated that the police believe the suspect was “either under the influence or suffering from some type of mental illness” when he unleashed the brutal beatings.
One victim told police he was walking along Mass. Ave toward Central Square shortly after 3:30 p.m., on Saturday when he saw a man walking directly toward him. The victim said he tried avoiding him, stepping left and then right, but the suspect “mirrored” him before punching him at least twice in the eye, knocking him to the ground, according to a police report.
“The suspect had been yelling something unintelligible at the time,” police wrote.
The victim was taken to the hospital.
Moments later, police responded to assault on another man, who told police a man matching the suspect’s description punched him “once in the face for no reason.”
The third victim told police that he had walked out of a furniture store when a woman he was with heard the Suspect yelling, “Oh you think that’s funny?” Suddenly, the man was punched in the right side of his head from behind, dazing him as he fell to the ground.
The suspect, meanwhile, “kept walking without breaking stride,” according to the police.
Attorney Sam’s Take On Bizarre And Negligent Crimes
“Sam, why would you group these two stories together? One involves a vehicular homicide and the other an intentional assault and battery.”
The two stories are similar to stories we see at times likes these when driving is, by nature, hazardous and, as a result, folks seem to be limited by the weather in their movement…sometimes even being kept inside longer than their emotional stability can deal with it.
Last week, we discussed a matter in which the defendant would likely be invoking the so-called “insanity defense”. It sounds like that defense may be used in the Suspect’s case as well.
However, understand that feeling cooped up for a long time that you get violent is not “insanity”. Likewise, voluntary intoxication is also not a defense.
“But, the authorities will take the surrounding circumstances into account, right?”
Sure. But not in the way that you mean. The prosecution is less likely to try to excuse a criminal defendant’s actions than to use it against him.
The fact that winter driving is hazardous simply means that the driver should have been more careful while driving. If he says he could not see and did not know he had hit someone, then the weather conditions meant that he should have been even more conscious of his surroundings. And that being cooped up until the Suspect became violent?
The resulting anger becomes a motivation.
As far as the Commonwealth is concerned, the Suspect had simply indulged his selfish anger again and again whether really having been pushed over the edge.
By the way, both the Defendant and the Suspect were both said to have fled their respective scenes. That will also be used as evidence of consciousness of guilt.
To read the original stories upon this blog is based, please go http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/02/cambridge_police_hunt_for_man_who_punched_pedestrians and http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/24025486/police-man-arrested-in-fatal-hit-and-run-lied-to-investigators-mother
