Articles Posted in Criminal Law

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It may take awhile for felony prosecutions to come, but, usually, when the police painstakingly take their time in their investigation, suspects emerge. This is being played out in Boston’s Suffolk Superior Court. Kimani Washington, 35 (hereinafter the “Defendant”), has been arrested in connection with the quadruple homicide in Mattapan in September. He was charged with various charges, including armed robbery, armed carjacking, trafficking cocaine, and being an armed career criminal.

He has pleaded “Not Guilty” and was ordered held on $500,000 cash bail after arraignment in Suffolk Superior Court.

Interestingly, the Defendant was not charged in the actual murders, although the prosecutors allege that he was a mastermind behind the armed home invasion that precipitated the deadly shootings.

Apparently, during the investigation into the murders, police found over 28 grams of crack cocaine allegedly taken during the robbery, as well as two guns. They say that these were found in a location where the Defendant often stayed. The Commonwealth also claims that one of these firearms were fired during the multiple homicide.

The Defendant is not the only one charged in the case. Another man has been actually charged with the murders and are expected in Suffolk Superior Court shortly. Further, another gentleman was arraigned previously arraigned on murder charges and held without bail.
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We haven’t talked about drug cases for awhile. As you know, possession of a small amount of marijuana has been decriminalized. However, that does not mean that having it is now problem free.

Confused?

Well, it depends on the circumstances in which you possessed it. For example, if there is even the hint that you might be sharing or otherwise distributing pot you are going to be charged with possession with intent to distribute.

And then there was the case of Ms. Sue Thayer, 65 (hereinafter, the “Defendant”) She was charged with felony drug charges when it was discovered that she was growing marijuana. Apparently, she was growing it for her son.

In 2007, the Defendant was charged with possessing more than 25 pot plants. She said she grew the plants out of necessity because the marijuana improved the appetite and general condition of her son, who suffered from chronic wasting.

She tried a defense of “necessity”. It did not fly.
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We take today’s blog from the “You’ve Gotta Be Kidding Me” section of the news. It involves a man who clearly picked the wrong time to attempt to get back his Massachusetts driver’s license.

One would imagine that even without the pending Parole debacle claiming the front page every day , that Algary Horton, 53, of Mattapan (hereinafter, the “Nondriver”) would still be refused.

You see, the Nondriver does not have the greatest driving record. He has been convicted six times for drunk driving for example. Oh yes, and there was that time, in 1993, when he killed a woman on one of those allegedly drunken drivers and then fled the scene.

The Nondriver does get points for consistency, however. He was convicted of OUI in 1979, 1987, 1989, 1993, 1998 and 2004, authorities said.
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It would appear that this Massachusetts driver thought ahead. Realizing that the coming storm would make it difficult to go out and drink, Ms. Tara Tobin (hereinafter, the “Defendant”) got in one last trip just before the snow. The result was not too pretty.

The Yarmouth police say that the Defendant admitted that she had drunk six or seven beers in Dennis before driving.

What happened? The crash took place Tuesday night around 9 p.m..

The unusual part? According to the police, the Defendant, whatever condition she was in, did not cause the accident.

Apparently, a 47-year-old emotionally disturbed man jumped into the path of a Dodge Dakota pickup truck. The truck’s driver swerved to avoid the man and was then rear-ended by the Defendant’s car..

The man suffered serious, but non-life-threatening, injuries and was taken to Cape Cod Hospital, police said.
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Here’s one for the sex trade! In the past, we have discussed many times the various, and in my opinion, faulty rationales for keeping prostitution illegal. One of those rationales has been that prostitutes are, per se, victims. They are exploited and forced to perform sex acts for money. The thought seems to have been that being a prostitute is definitional of losing one’s will and performing the evil deeds by force.

Well, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has ruled against this equation. It has thrown out the convictions of a pimp and a madam (hereinafter, the “Defendants”), ruling that the couple did not lure a homeless and drug-addicted teenager into prostitution because the 16-year-old runaway had sold her body for money in the past.

The court did, however, let stand the Defendants’ convictions for deriving support from prostitution and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

The allegations in the case were that the Defendants drove the teen to the hotel where she met an undercover detective and agreed to engage in sex for $280, according to court records. Using a ruse, the officer convinced the teen to leave the hotel before any sexual acts occurred. The teen then apparently handed the cash the Defendants, who were waiting in the hotel parking lot
The court found, “We think that the language of the statute is plain and unambiguous and that it clearly expresses the Legislature’s intent to penalize a person for inducing a minor, who is not then so engaged, to engage in the commercial enterprise of prostitution by offering for hire his or her body for indiscriminate sexual activity”.

As a Boston sex crimes criminal defense attorney for over twenty years, not to mention previous years as a prosecutor, I have been involved in a number of cases involving prostitution.
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While Massachusetts schools have been struggling with ways in which to comply with the over-arching and extremely broad anti-bullying law, a couple of students at Brookline High School have apparently been doing their own planning. According to officials, that planning would include a mass homicide.

The students allegedly posted on Facebook plans to meet after school and commit the deed according to the prosecution. They indicated online that they could use gallons of gasoline and use thousands of syringes full of bear tranquilizers. When one of the lads suggested shooting some guns at proposed victims, the other genius responded that he was “way ahead of you,”.

Brookline police searched the homes of both students and seized their computers, but have not found any weapons, according to police..

The pair were arrested on Wednesday after one of their fathers became aware of the cyber-conversation and, apparently, felt that it would be better that his son end up in trouble…than dead or culpable for mass murder.
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We live in a “when the going gets tough, the tough get blaming” society today. We continue to fall into the same behavior in the face of tragedy. Then we wonder why we have the same problems. A police officer has been murdered during a robbery t. The shooter, Dominic Cinelli, who was freed on parole in 2009 and who killed Officer John B. Maguire on December 26, 2010, had an extremely bad criminal history, yet he convinced a parole board that he was a good candidate for release.

Yesterday, as the parole board returned to work, I was interviewed on WBZ, part of which interview can be found here.

The political debate has gotten so trident that Governor Deval Patrick, simply making the statement that this is a time in which we should focus on the victims of what happened, aka the officer’s family, has raised people’s ire. He also had the temerity to suggest he should gather all the information before he passes judgment.

Such outlandish suggestions brought widespread anger from police chiefs and victims’ advocates. When we get a heaping helping of angry voices, we naturally get a side order of political posturing to go along with it. For example, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo not only expressed outrage at the board’s decision but vowed to make it a “major focus” of legislative action in the new session.

Legislation has been suggested which would remove the possibility of parole for certain repeat offenders, and require judges to impose the maximum possible punishment for anyone convicted of their third felony in Superior Court.

And, of course, why not make it a “Republican vs. Democrat” issue why we are at it? A group of GOP lawmakers claim that the bill has been stuck in the Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee since March, and that versions of it have been circulating without action for nearly a decade on Beacon Hill.
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Well, if this past New Years Eve in Lowell and Lynn are any indication, we are in for another angry and violent year. Both Massachusetts towns were scenes of armed assaults, one of them fatal.

Yesterday, Jameson Phoun, 20 , and Sothy Voeun, 19, both of Lowell, (hereinafter, the “Defendants”) were arraigned n Lowell District Court on charges of, among other things, first-degree murder. They were held without bail, as istypical in such cases.

The Defendants are charged with having burst into a party where they had been asked to leave and shooting up a room filled with 25 party-goers. Thus far, one homicide has resulted.

According to the prosecution, said shooting was meant to “scare” the celebrants.

“I don’t characterize this as a gang issue so much as a violence issue amongst young people who are willing to carry weapons and utilize them to resolve conflict,” Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said, standing outside the courtroom moments after the arraignment. “I would certainly refer to it as brazen. I would certainly refer to it as lawless. I would refer to it as tragic and troubling, as well.”

One 20-year-old woman died in the Lowell assault. Seven others were wounded, including two who were shot in the head. The condition other shooting victims is said to be “day to day”. “Everyone is in various stages of stable condition, and we’re hopeful that they’ll continue to get better as the days go on.”

It was a bloody New Year’s Eve in Lynn as well. There, a 55-year-old woman was hit in the chest by a stray bullet fired from a gun outside her home.
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2010 is ending with a tragedy which many people believe could have, and should have, been averted. I am talking about the recent homicide of Woburn police officer John Maguire as he tried to apprehend robbery suspects during Sunday’s blizzard. The accused killer, Dominic Dinelli , 57, (hereinafter, the “Parolee”), is also dead, by the way. Massachusetts is in an uproar pointing the finger of blame at the Parole Board which paroled the Parolee in 2008.

In fact, let’s be clear. The Board did fail to follow the applicable law which mandates that the prosecutors who put the Parolee away 20 years earlier be notified of the hearing.

Does this really mean that, had the Board notified the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, the Parolee would not have been released? If so, would the prosecutor’s intervention have been warranted?

There is no reason to believe that the prosecutors had any more knowledge about the Parolee than the Board already did. After all, the Parolee had been incarcerated for 20 years. There was no secret about his background before then. He had an almost life-long history of violent crime. This is why he was serving the sentences he was serving in the first place.

One goal of incarceration about which we like to forget is rehabilitation. Often, there is little such rehabilitation to be observed. In this case, however, the Board voted to free the Parolee in a 6 – 0 vote. During the hearing, board members praised the Parolee for evolving from a drug-addled menace of the prison system to a model prisoner who spoke to other addicts about recovery.
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Today, as we “hunker down” and “enjoy” the last blizzard of the year, we continue the discussion about recent Massachusetts sentences that were recently handed down to fairly unusual criminal defendants during this holiday season. Today’s matter involves a meeting of sexual assault and prostitution.

James M. Burke, 43, of Chelsea (hereinafter, the “Defendant”) was a criminal court clerk magistrate in Chelsea District Court. Apparently, he had an interesting thing going with a couple of criminal defendants in court. These particular defendants had been arrested for prostitution.

According to one of the complainants, the Defendant removed her from her cell in the courthouse in 2005. He then led her to a room, locked the door, and promised to get her case dismissed in exchange for oral sex. After she fulfilled her part of the deal, the case was not dismissed.

The second victim testified that the Defendant stalked her after her arrest on a prostitution charge, then sexually assaulted her when she was at the courthouse last year. She claimed during the trial in federal court that she was forced into a downstairs room, where he sat on her during the assault and threatened to keep her in jail if she did not comply with him.

“I absolutely did not consent to this action,” she told the judge . “The brutality of it was shocking to me. Even though I had worked on the streets on occasion, nothing compared to the humiliation and powerlessness that I felt.”
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