The Massachusetts Appeals Court vacated an involuntary-manslaughter conviction because substitute DNA analysts conveyed testimonial findings from an absent analyst and the error was not harmless.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court preserved trial-judge discretion to allow a detective’s account of a Spanish interview for rebuttal without an English transcript.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court held that police could not open a soft backpack without evidence that an exterior patfrisk would be futile or unsafe.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court vacated all judgments and set aside all verdicts in a child sexual abuse prosecution, holding that the trial judge abused her discretion by allowing prior bad act testimony covering forty-two transcript pages to overwhelm the twenty-six pages of testimony on the charged conduct. The court stressed that trial judges have an independent duty to control the volume of prior bad act evidence and that limiting instructions cannot cure the prejudice when such evidence is so voluminous as to invite a propensity inference in a credibility-dependent case.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court vacated a sexually dangerous person (SDP) civil commitment after finding that all three Commonwealth experts had based their sexual sadism disorder diagnoses almost entirely on facts from police reports for charges dismissed in 2002 and 2003. Because the petitioner requested a voir dire on independent admissibility and the Commonwealth never showed the complainants could or would testify, allowing the experts to rely on those allegations without an admissibility hearing was reversible error under Markvart and Department of Youth Servs. v. A Juvenile.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court reversed the dismissal of a negligent operation complaint against a dump truck driver who forgot to lower the truck’s raised body before driving under a highway overpass, holding that the vehicle’s dangerous condition — not erratic driving — established probable cause under G. L. c. 90, § 24 (2) (a).
The Massachusetts Appeals Court held that a sex offender’s subsequent criminal convictions rendered moot his challenge to the reliability of hearsay evidence used in his SORB reclassification from level 2 to level 3, affirming the board’s decision in a case of first impression for published classification appeals.