Commonwealth v. Albert — Private Diary Entry Cannot Serve as First Complaint Evidence; Rape-of-a-Child Convictions Vacated
The Massachusetts Appeals Court vacated Robert Albert’s rape-of-a-child convictions and remanded for a new trial, holding that his daughter’s private diary entry — written the day after the last alleged assault but never shared with anyone — could not qualify as “first complaint evidence” under Commonwealth v. King because the first complaint doctrine requires a communication to another person; the entry was more detailed than the actual oral disclosure, deprived the defendant of a witness to cross-examine, and was accompanied by a limiting instruction that misdescribed the diary as a “telling” of the assault.