It would seem that almost anyone could agree on the need to criminalize and punish Massachusetts sex offenders who deliberately send obscene messages electronically to minors, wouldn’t it? Well, make that “anyone could agree on the need” to accomplish these goals – but hardly the method. This reality has been…
Here’s an interesting question someone put to me recently. It has to do with rape and sexual assault: “Let’s assume that I decided to pretend I was gay to get in with the more trendy women who hate me for being a “heterosexual pig.” Assume I got such a woman…
The criminal defense bar in Massachusetts has for over a year paid close attention to defrocked Catholic priest Paul Shanley’s appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), of his 2005 rape conviction. The SJC’s decision is now in, and it isn’t good for Shanley, or for many Massachusetts rape…
My apologies for my absence here recently – I’ve been sidelined with a bad cold. Here’s an item that will probably be appreciated mostly by lawyers (vs. lay persons,) but on a legal level, the issue is significant. It’s a decision by the state Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) that more…
Not that many people outside of the criminal defense profession or the criminal justice system are aware of this, but in Massachusetts, once a convicted sex offender’s prison sentence is finished, the story isn’t necessarily over. You see, once a convict’s criminal sentence for a Massachusetts sex offense has been…
This case is an interesting example of the importance of prosecutors – and defense counsel – taking care to watch what they say in their closing arguments to a jury, and of how a case can go awry in the last minutes of trying it. In Berkshire Superior Court last…
In another example of how professional sports players are anything but angels, or icons that should be praised, a former New England Patriots football player received a two year jail sentence earlier this week in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, for the statutory rape of a 15 year-old girl who…
In my previous post on this topic, I noted that the Massachusetts Appeals Court has recently handed down a decision that changes the way the state Sex Offender Registration Board (SORB,) determines whether or not someone previously convicted of a sex offense, must continue to register as a sex offender…
Sex offenses in Massachusetts, or anywhere, elicit a strong reaction on the part of the public and the media – and understandably so. This is especially true when the offenses involve children or the vulnerable – again, with good reason. Wisely, we in Massachusetts (and other states also) have enacted…
According to internet safety experts and many public policy officials, teens increasingly face the possibility of becoming registered sex offenders for sending sexually explicit images of themselves (or others) over the Internet and their cell phones. More and more schools and parents have discovered that their teenage sons and daughters…