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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a federal law that lets certain workers engaged in interstate commerce file class-action suits over pay disputes doesn't apply to GrubHub drivers who clicked their agreement to settle any disagreements in arbitration with the company. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that the state's environmental secretary went too far in approving a plan that would let developers replace the Aquarium garage and the James Hook seafood store with skyscrapers - not on the merits but because the legislature didn't give her specific permission to put her stamp on waterfront projects. Read more.
Unlike in some other states, you still need a license to own a gun in Massachusetts. The state's highest court ruled today that in certain cases, judges can order people arrested for violating the law to be held without bail before trial as a danger to society - such as a man arrested after driving through a police barricade at the Franklin Field housing project early one morning last year, allegedly with a loaded gun in his glove compartment Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that the state can go ahead and mail out applications for voters who want to vote by mail in the fall elections, tossing a bid by what's left of the Massachusetts Republican Party to block mail-in voting. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld Shaquille Brown's conviction for murdering Christopher Austin on Ashmont Street in Dorchester in 2017. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a woman who sued Harvard University both to gain possession of four daguerreotypes of two of her ancestors ordered stripped half naked in 1850 by professor Louis Agassiz, whose contributions to geology were matched by the depths of his racism, has no right to the images, but that she does have the right to try to convince a jury that Harvard committed "negligent and indeed reckless infliction of emotional distress" by continuing to use the images for its own purposes even after she objected. Read more.
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