Showing posts with label MA Criminal Attorney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MA Criminal Attorney. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Motion to Suppress Granted

Criminal Defense Attorney John MacDonald Results


January, 2012:

Attorney MacDonald’s Motion to Suppress all evidence seized by Providence Police during a car stop was granted by a Superior Court Judge. 

Client’s charges of possession of cocaine are now subject to dismissal.

The basis of the motion was the lack of probable cause to stop the vehicle and search the passengers.

The Superior Court judge agreed and all evidence seized is no longer admissible at trial.

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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Man Charged in Boston Drug Trafficking


Boston Drug Trafficking Targeted At Logan Airport And East Boston District Court

September 22, 2011
Carlos J. Lanns, a 24-year-old New Jersey gentleman (and hereinafter, the “Defendant”), flew to Boston Monday…and into the arms of the law. He now stands charged with a number of Massachusetts drug crimes.

According to the Commonwealth, the Defendant arrived at Logan International Airport with 2.17 kilograms of cocaine, wrapped in plastic, in his shoes. Law enforcement values the drugs at an estimated street value of more than $200,000.

Prosecutors allege that the cocaine was hidden inside four pairs of shoes in his checked luggage. State Police arrested the Defendant shortly after he got off JetBlue Flight 862 from Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Apparently, they had been alerted by US Customs and Border Protection.

While, the method used to find the drugs was not revealed “so as not to compromise ongoing interdiction efforts,” Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office said, drug-sniffing dogs have been used in the past to check luggage from certain international flights.

At his arraignment, the Defendant is said to have seemed confused as his interpreter explained the proceedings to him. At his East Boston bail hearing, bail was set at $300,000 cash, although the Defendant had no prior record. The Commonwealth also requested that he be made to surrender his passport should bail be made as he allegedly has ties to the Dominican Republic.
It was so ordered.

The Defendant has pleaded not guilty to charges of trafficking in more than 200 grams of a Class B substance. He faces a possible 15-year mandatory minimum state prison sentence if convicted…
…so far.

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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

We Need an End to the Death Penalty in America

There is nothing quite as disappointing as watching our Courts and systems of Government fail and persecute the very people they are meant to protect.

Troy Anthony Davis: Victim of American Injustice

September 22, 2011
James Clark

Troy Davis was executed by the state of Georgia last night at 11:08 PM, despite a worldwide movement over 1 million strong that drew attention to the glaring doubts of his guilt. With no physical evidence and a host of witness recantations, all indications are that the state of Georgia killed an innocent man.

Outside the death row facility in Jackson, Georgia, I joined Troy's friends, family, and supporters in vigil. About 200 people arrived early enough to be allowed on the prison grounds in the highly controlled roped-off area reserved for execution opponents. Hundreds, maybe thousands more people were looking on from across the street. After visiting with Troy for the final time, his family attended a service at a makeshift church in a parking lot across the street before joining the protestors on the prison grounds.

Throughout the day of Troy's execution, periods of high energy and excitement alternated with long stretches of waiting. Prayer was continuous, as various clergy and other people of faith struggled with the difficulty of waiting for an execution while hoping for a reprieve. With each successive denial of Troy's final last-ditch appeal from the Superior Court and the Georgia Supreme Court, the mood grew somber and fearful.

At around 7 p.m., the crowd latched onto what turned out to be a false report of a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court. The entire crowd suddenly burst with joy and celebration. People jumped in the air and fell on their knees and prayed and hugged one another. Others had confused looks, made confirmation phone calls, and had to explain that this was not a stay of execution. The Court reviewed the appeal but took no action, delaying the execution for only a few hours. The Court finally did deny the appeal after 10:00 p.m. About an hour later, Troy Davis was dead.

Amidst so much doubt, there is only one certainty: the world is watching.

The Twitter hashtags #TooMuchDoubt and #TroyDavis have exploded as people around the world watched Georgia take the life of an innocent man. Protests were sparked around the country and the world, including an impromptu protest of hundreds at the United States Supreme Court while the Court deliberated Troy's appeal. Over 1 million people signed petitions for Troy before he was executed, and millions more watched in shock as the travesty of justice unfolded.

We must ensure that Troy Davis did not die for nothing. Millions of people have now seen the danger, dysfunction, and catastrophic injustice of America's death penalty.

I tweeted what I saw and experienced in Atlanta and Jackson from @ACLU and my main point was this: The only way to avoid executing the in nocent is end the #deathpenalty. #TroyDavis.
That clear statement of fact was retweeted more than one hundred times. And the hashtag "#RIPTroyDavis" is trending not just in Atlanta, but worldwide. So while the movement to save Troy's life ended late last night, the movement to end the death penalty is stronger than ever. We must turn our anger and anguish into action.

Join the fight to protect the innocent and end the death penalty in California, or wherever you live.
As the ACLU's Tanya Greene wrote this morning in the wake of Davis's execution, "We must continue to fight a system that disrespects people so viciously and so finally, all the while claiming fair proceedings in the name of justice…Until we win, I, too, am Troy Davis."

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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, the Untold Story of ‘Conviction’

Ineffective Counsel - The Kenneth Waters Story


In 1983, after a five-day jury trial in Middlesex County Superior Court, Kenneth Waters was convicted of the first-degree murder and armed robbery of Katharina Brow. He was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. However, if Waters’ lawyer had done his job in the first place, he probably would have never been convicted.

‘Conviction’ is a powerful film about the undaunted dedication of Betty Anne Waters in proving her brother’s innocence. Hilary Swank plays the lead role of Betty Anne, a sister who literally dedicates her life to exonerating her brother Kenny from an unjust murder conviction. Despite being a single mother with two young boys, at her brother’s insistence, Betty Anne enrolls at CCRI and eventually completes her bachelor’s degree at Rhode Island College and law degree at Roger Williams University Law School. During law school, she learned about DNA testing and the work of the Innocence Project in exonerating individuals wrongfully convicted of crimes.

In November of 1998, Betty Anne wrote to the Innocence Project requesting assistance in her brother’s case. After locating the blood evidence still stored in the basement of the Middlesex Courthouse, Betty Anne secured the assistance of the Innocence Project to test the blood evidence which later determined that the DNA of the perpetrator did not match Waters. Kenny Waters was released from prison in 2001.

I first learned about Betty Anne Waters seven years ago when she was the guest speaker at the Rhode Island Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ annual meeting. Betty Anne told this very powerful story about with such amazing grace and humility. I sat in wonder over her absolute dedication to her brother’s cause, a dedication that spanned over two decades. I also couldn’t help think about the mistakes made by Waters’ defense counsel that led to his conviction. Recently, Betty Anne was kind enough to sit down and relate to me some lessons of her brother’s case that that all defense attorneys should be aware of.

“My family and I visited all of the top lawyers in the area, including F. Lee Bailey, but they all wanted a huge sum of money, up to fifty thousand dollars, just to get started,” remarked Betty Anne. “In my family, no one had graduated college and we had no money. We wanted to raise the funds but Kenny did not want the family spending money on a lawyer for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Throughout his case, Waters was represented by an experienced court-appointed attorney. “He seemed to have a command of the courtroom and told us that he had tried many murder cases, so we trusted him” noted Betty Anne. However, in the 28 years that elapsed since her brother’s conviction, Betty Anne learned that this attorney never properly investigated this case and was completely ineffective in obtaining available evidence that proved his innocence.

Kenny Waters was not convicted based upon eye-witness identification, forensic evidence or a confession to police. Instead, he was convicted primarily as a result of the testimony of two ex-girlfriends, both of which testified that Waters admitted to them that he had killed Katharina Brow. Their testimony, along with Waters’ failure to prove his alibi defense, was enough to convict him of first-degree murder with extreme atrocity and sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was heard and denied in 1987.
While DNA testing eventually cleared Waters, if his defense counsel had done his job in the first place, he probably would have never been convicted.

During grand jury proceedings, officials from the Ayer Police testified that no usable latent prints were recovered from the crime scene. Yet no defense motions were ever filed to confirm this testimony. In fact, Massachusetts State Police had recovered several usable latent prints from the crime scene that were identified as belonging to the perpetrator. These prints were compared with the prints of several suspects, including Waters, and he was excluded as the source. The evidence that Waters was innocent of this crime was in existence in 1980. It did not require the development of DNA testing 18 years later.

“I asked the retired State Police BCI Detective why he never came forward with this evidence, knowing full well that it proved that Kenny did not commit this murder. He told me he never thought to since he heard that Kenny had admitted to the murder,” said Betty Anne. It took over two decades and a civil action subpoena to produce the box of latent prints and test results that were still stored in the detective’s personal storage unit. When recovered, they proved that the Massachusetts State Police had already excluded Waters as a source of the perpetrator’s prints long before he was ever charged. It also proved that members of the Ayer Police Department were well aware of these results prior to charging him. These shocking findings helped secure a civil judgment against the town of Ayer.

The bottom line is that Waters’ trial lawyer never demanded an independent inspection of the latent prints recovered from the crime scene. Instead, he simply took the word of a police officer testifying under oath at a grand jury that no usable latent prints existed. If Waters’ attorney had demanded to inspect and test the prints, he would have discovered that they were not only usable, they exonerated his client. The so-called admissions testified to by Waters’ ex-girlfriends were later discarded by the District Attorney’s office in the face of compelling DNA evidence. This decision could have taken place two decades earlier in light of the fingerprint evidence. Without question, a jury verdict of not-guilty would have been much more probable.

To those of us in the criminal defense bar, the lessons of Kenny Waters’ conviction cannot be clearer. We simply cannot accept at face value the claims of police, state experts or for that matter, state prosecutors. (Interestingly enough, the former district attorney who tried this case, now a Massachusetts judge, later testified at deposition that she was unaware of what a latent print was). We must, without exception, separately investigate and verify all available evidence. If Kenny Waters’ original trial lawyer had done so, he probably would not have spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

Copyright June 2011 @ John MacDonald, Esquire


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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.



Friday, June 10, 2011

Federal Criminal Discovery Rules Changing

Discover Changes

In criminal defense matters, nothing is more important to the client’s case than the quality of the information you receive from the state. The current situation very often involves late or missing discovery and hinders adequate representation of clients charged criminally in the process. The following article discusses the proposed changes to the discovery law being contemplated on the Federal level and what that would mean for criminal defense attorneys and prosecutors in particular.

Federal Judiciary Divided Over Changing Criminal Discovery Rule

Federal judges are divided over the necessity to change the rules of criminal procedure to put a greater emphasis and burden on prosecutors to turn over favorable information to defense lawyers, a Federal Judicial Center report concluded.

The center, the research arm of the judiciary, surveyed all U.S. Attorney’s Offices, thousands of defense lawyers and federal and magistrate judges to assess the merits of a proposed amendment to Rule 16, which governs discovery in criminal cases.

The FJC said 43% of about 1,500 judges completed the online survey, which was conducted last year. Eighty-five of the 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices participated in the review. More than 5,000 private criminal defense lawyers and federal public defenders provided their assessment.

The judiciary was evenly split on the need for amending the rule. But judges in districts with local rules or standing orders that require broader disclosure of information than what’s required in Rule 16 indicated greater support for a rule change than other judges in the judiciary. The Justice Department opposed a rule change. More than 90% of the defense lawyers who responded favored a change.
The two most frequent disclosure violations among prosecutors, judges reported, were the failure to provide favorable information on time and the scope of the disclosure to the defense.

Judges also reported they rarely hold an attorney in contempt and infrequently report a prosecutor’s conduct to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, bar counsel or other disciplinary body.
The survey also said that more than 60% of judges said they did not have a case in the past five years in which a prosecutor or defense lawyer failed to comply with disclosure obligations.

In 2009, Judge Emmet Sullivan of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote to the Judicial Conference criminal rules committee asking the group of lawyers, judges and law professors to reassess, for a second time in recent years, an amendment to the rule.

Sullivan was the trial judge who oversaw the Justice Department’s botched prosecution of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. Sullivan called the Stevens case one of the most shocking examples of prosecutorial misconduct he’d ever seen during his time on the bench.

DOJ officials tout what they call a "comprehensive" approach to discovery reform in arguing against a rule change.

The department early last year issued new discovery guidance to all federal prosecutors. The memos, issued by then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, encouraged “broad and early” discovery.

Also, the department announced its intent to provide more training for prosecutors.
Copyright Mike Scarcella

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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Child Support, Not Just for Dad’s Anymore

More Women Paying Child Support

At one time in the Family Court system, you would have been hard-pressed to find a father with custody of their children after a divorce. It was almost a carte blanche fact that women, mothers, would end up with custody of the children in any divorce situation. In fact, if a woman didn’t end up with custody, there had to be something drastically wrong with the home environment; because judges loathed taking children from their mothers.

Like everything however, situations and criteria change over the years, and with more women than ever now having to enter the work force along-side their male companions, they are not necessarily the automatic choice anymore for custodial parent of the minor children.

In a sad and ironic twist, women, who entered the work force initially to help support their families when it became obvious that two incomes were needed often just for basic survival, have now eliminated themselves as sole custody winners in the battles for their children by this very behavior.

In the past, it was understood that a man would leave the house, often early in the morning, to work all day, and return late at night. This left him very little time to be available for the child. With the advances of women into careers and the workforce, more and more children were seeing daycare personnel more than they saw their own parents even while their parents were married. Judge’s consider this time constraint now when deciding which parent will have custody of the children.

Additional considerations are also made for the basic criteria of healthy home environment, and financial ability to support the children; though time available to devote to the child’s care has become a major factor in most custody decisions, forcing women to re-evaluate their roles as matriarch of their families and very often having no choice as to be allowed the luxury of choosing their children over their careers, means they no longer can support them financially anyway.

If you are entering into a divorce or custody situation with your spouse or partner, contact Aggressive Legal Services for advice and an appointment.

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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Criminal Defense Attorney and Criminal Defendant Rights

The role of Padilla v. Kentucky continues to be a pertinent decision making tool in any discussion about the rights of criminal defendants within our criminal justice system. The following article speaks to the repercussions of this landmark decision.


Padilla v. Kentucky and the Role of Criminal Defense Representation

May 3, 2011

Since the U.S. Supreme court decided Padilla v. Kentucky in early 2010, the role of criminal defense representation related to counseling clients about the broader consequences of criminal convictions has been under scrutiny.

Since the U.S. Supreme court decided Padilla v. Kentucky in early 2010, the role of criminal defense representation related to counseling clients about the broader consequences of criminal convictions has been under scrutiny. The American Bar Association (ABA) used Padilla as a starting point to form a task force in late 2010 to study the impact of the case.

While the outcome of the study could directly affect how current and past criminal cases are handled, the main practice consideration for criminal defense attorneys, particularly in New York, is to understand and explain conviction consequences more fully to their clients.

Padilla v. Kentucky


In Padilla, the Court found that a criminal defense attorney exhibited "constitutionally deficient" representation when he did not counsel a non-citizen client about the deportation consequences of a guilty plea.

Jose Padilla resided in the United States as a legal permanent resident for more than 40 years. He was even a recognized Vietnam War veteran. Padilla was charged with transporting marijuana in Kentucky, which put himself at risk for deportation because he was not a citizen. Padilla's lawyer advised him to enter a guilty plea under the assumption that his many years living in the U.S. would offset his immigrant status. Immediately following his guilty plea, Padilla was ordered to be deported.

Padilla claimed during his post-conviction hearing, which is where a defendant asks to have a conviction overturned, that his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel was violated because of his attorney's advice was incorrect.

Although the Kentucky Court of Appeals sided with Padilla, the Kentucky Supreme Court denied Padilla's request to set aside his guilty plea. They stated that the Sixth Amendment "does not protect defendants from erroneous deportation advice because deportation is merely a 'collateral' consequence of a conviction." The U.S. Supreme Court, however, decided in favor of Padilla. The Court held that criminal defense attorneys must advise their clients when a criminal plea bears a risk of deportation, because of the seriousness of this consequence due to pleading guilty to a criminal charge.

Padilla's conviction was therefore overturned because his lawyer did not inform him about the likelihood of deportation after pleading guilty. This advice was deemed ineffective, which did infringe on Padilla's Sixth Amendment rights.

Since the opinion was published in March of 2010, the case has been cited in other criminal convictions where guilty pleas, even by U.S. citizens, resulted in negative consequences like termination of employment, loss of child custody, removal from housing and as evidence in civil lawsuits. This shows that while the Padilla ruling specifically addresses lawyers representing immigrant clients in criminal proceedings, the case has had a wider impact on criminal defense representation and expectations as a whole.

ABA Task Force


In December of 2010, the ABA's criminal justice section formed a task force to study the impact of Padilla v. Kentucky and related rulings on the practice of criminal defense. The task force will not only focus on the client advising obligations the Padilla case places on criminal defense attorneys, but it will also address how lawyers can achieve the broader role and responsibilities now expected of them.

The ABA criminal section chair, and member of the task force, is law school professor Bruce Green, who stated in an interview with the New York Law Journal that "Padilla raised the level of consciousness. It has reminded lawyers that they must learn about, and advise clients about, the impact of a guilty plea on their immigration status and in other significant ways beyond sentencing."

Green also indicated that the group has gathered significant data on criminal cases that resulted in specific consequences directly related to a plea or conviction.

The task force will continue to analyze what further assistance lawyers can give to advise clients about any possible consequences, but in the meantime Green thinks that "Criminal defense lawyers might help by broadening the scope of their representation beyond the criminal case or by making referrals to, and collaborating with, other professionals. The task force will study how lawyers and their offices address these situations, often in the face of time and resource limitations."

Practice Considerations


Specifically in New York, the Padilla v. Kentucky decision has increased the number of requests to overturn convictions and apply Padilla retroactively because of insufficient legal advice about entering guilty pleas and immigration consequences. It has also caused both prosecutors and defense attorneys to offer up and seek out more options and information about what a particular conviction may do to a non-citizen living and working in the U.S.

While Padilla has had a direct impact on practicing criminal defense in New York, it is unknown whether the results of the task force will be as profound. The main outcome may be that defense lawyers should advise clients about any legal or non-legal consequences, such as termination of public housing, when entering a guilty plea, which is a notion that has not yet been applied in a New York court.

For criminal defense attorneys, the most important lesson both Padilla and the ABA task force teaches is that defense lawyers need to understand their clients' situations and be willing to fully explain the consequences of any pleas or convictions before they are entered. If you were recently charged with a crime and are either a U.S. citizen or non-citizen in New York, contact an experienced New York criminal defense attorney with immigration knowledge to advise you about all possible consequences and handle your case properly from the start.

Article provided by Mark J. Sacco

Visit us at www.mjsacco.com
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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.

Monday, August 16, 2010

RI Defendant in Shooting Crime Over a Cigarette Sentenced to 10 Years

A 25 year old RI man, Marques Wilson, was sentenced this week by Judge Charles H. Pelton for shooting a RI man in the chest over a cigarette. 

The victim is a 41 year old man who was sitting in his vehicle having a cigarette in the parking lot of the Genesis Medical Center in Davenport while waiting for his son, who was being treated in the hospital for an injury.

Wilson walked up to the victim and asked him for a cigarette. When the victim replied that he did not have another to share, Wilson tried to forcibly remove him from the vehicle, ultimately pulling out a gun and shooting him in the chest before fleeing the scene in a group of three vehicles that were later apprehended in Moline after a police chase.

The victims injuries, a gunshot wound to the mid-torso, were serious enough that he spent 6 days in the hospital and has not yet returned to work.

Wilson maintained that it was not proven that he was the actual shooter in the crime although the evidence proved differently, however the victim himself could not identify Wilson as the person who attacked him. The accused's mother also spoke out after the hearing stating that there was another person involved and that her son was innocent of the charges against him.

The second suspect, Johnny D. Angel IV, also of Rock Island, is scheduled for trial on the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm on August 30, 2010 in the Rock Island County Circuit Court.

In the course of his trial, Wilson insisted that his other convictions for violent behavior not be taken into account for the charge involved in the shooting. Two weeks after the hospital shooting however, he stomped, kicked and punched a Liberian refugee, and along with another juvenile, stole a bike from the man. He was sentenced 24 months conditional discharge for pleading guilty to theft regarding the incident.

Judge Pelton and the jury had the option to sentence Wilson to up to 20 years in prison for the shooting crime. The fact that he only received 10 years was a testament to the fact that the Judge and jury in the matter felt he was young enough to change.


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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

URI Rape Trial Comes to a Close

Via the Associated Press article below, RI Criminal Defense Lawyer John MacDonald notes the outcome of a high-profile sexual assault case that was decided by a jury last week.

2 URI students acquitted of sexual assault

The Associated Press
July 29, 2010, 3:49PM

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — Two former University of Rhode Island students have been found not guilty of raping another student in a campus dorm almost two years ago.

The jury returned its verdict Thursday after about an hour and half of deliberations.

Jurors rejected the prosecution's case that Yaw Peprah (yah pep-RAH') of Lincoln and Estifanos Gizaw (eh-stuh-FAHN'-ohs GEE'-zaw) of Houston, Texas, had used "force and coercion" to rape a freshman student after a party involving alcohol and marijuana.

Peprah's lawyer suggested in closing arguments that the woman who accused the men did so because of embarrassment over having sex with them at the party. Attorney Roy Fowler said she did not call for help or attempt to leave the dorm suite.

Fowler had said earlier that a university judicial board cleared the men.



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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Criminal Defense Lawyer John MacDonald has Massachusetts Assault Charge Dismissed 15 Years Later

More Criminal Defense Results from Attorney John MacDonald

A 15 year-old Massachusetts charge of assault by means of a dangerous weapon case dismissed yesterday in Taunton District Court.

Client never realized that he had been charged after a fight until a traffic stop 15 years later.

I moved to dismiss for lack of prosecution but was denied.

I then passed the matter to a jury trial and forced the prosecution to locate its witnesses.

At trial, the Commonwealth was unable to proceed and the matter was dismissed.

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If you have questions about this posting or are interested in Criminal Defense, Divorce, or Immigration Law in RI contact Rhode Island Criminal Defense Lawyer John E. MacDonald at 401-421-1440.

To learn more about The Law Office of John MacDonald, please visit his website at AggressiveLegalServices.com.