Articles Posted in Criminal Law

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Yesterday, the Boston Globe’s front page reflected the start of a new series of articles on students, families and schools. It described the plight of Lexi, a 14-year-old girl who began classes at a new school in an “affluent suburb” west of Boston.

According to the story, Lexi’s torment began within the first few days, when a “friend” texted her the message, “Go online.”

“Online” being shorthand for “facebook”, Lexi went to the page to find pictures a girlfriend had taken a few months before of Lexi making faces at the camera. After the posting were a string of brilliant comments like, “You look like a rat that has been put on crack . . . in other words ugly as balls,” and ” hahaha”.

This was a terrific blow. After all, Lexi had realized that how she looked mattered a great deal in how she was or was not accepted. Now, there was a picture of her looking like a kid, neither polished nor particularly attractive..

“I knew from the beginning,” Lexi says now. “I knew it was basically everyone against me.”

Sure enough, in the months that followed, she was taunted at school. Boys called her foul names and girls snickered. Finally, the problem worsened as groups of students picked on her, surrounding her on the stairs or pushing her in the cafeteria. She even received threatening calls on her cell phone.
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As a Boston criminal defense attorney, there is an oft-said and ill-fated sentence claimed by clients. It reads, “…but I didn’t know that was illegal!”

Unfortunately, such lack of knowledge does not usually matter. They really mean it when they say “ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Further, there are times when ignorance of the facts is basically irrelevent.

A prime example of the latter is the case of statutory rape. “But I didn’t know she was just shy of her thirteenth birthday…she told me she was twenty-five” is not going to be a viable defense.

Another example is something that a psychiatrist who teaches at Harvard Medical School (clearly not an ignorant man by any estimation, yet, hereinafter, the “Defendant”) said this week about the trouble in which he has now found himself.

He had been hosting a graduation party in New Hampshire. He has released a statement that he didn’t know that there were students drinking at the high school graduation party .

Apparently, however, there were.
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The Boston Globe posted a “snapshot” on May 13th reviewing how busy the various Massachusetts are in terms of criminal cases. You can view it here.

As one can see, the number of criminal defendants handled by the different district courts varies widely. Springfield and Worcester, for example, saw more than 11,000 defendants each in 2009. Six courts saw fewer than 1,000. These were Gloucester, Winchendon, Newton, Brookline, Ipswich and Nantucket.

Generally, the busiest courts are the ones nearest metropolitan areas. Thus, Dorchester and Roxbury are liable to be busier than Newburyport or Sandwich.

Depending on the areas, some criminal cases are more prevalent than others. For example, you can expect more homicide cases to be passing through on their way to indictment in the busier courtrooms than someplace like Ipswich.

Another variable that can effect how busy is a certain court is the presence of schools, particularly high school and college. As we have discussed, this is likely to grow given the new bullying law.
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Oboy! It’s so exciting to solve age-old presumably unsolvable problems! Here in the Boston area, we seem to be doing just that. Can it be that our government is going to come up with really well-thought-out solutions and reduce the need for lawyers running around in civil and criminal courtrooms dealing with the fallout?

Sure. We’ve also finally outlawed the Ozone Layer.

Sweeping ant bullying legislation is poised for passage after lawmakers have struck agreement on a measure that proposes to require school employees to report all bullying incidents and require principals to investigate them. And that’s just for starters!

The bill now moves to the House of Representatives and Senate, where it is expected to win overwhelming approval any minute now.

Governor Devil Patrick has also voiced strong support for the bill, which gained momentum after the highly publicized deaths of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince and 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, who took their own lives after being bullied.

Representative Martha Walz, the bill’s primary author, said the mandatory reporting requirements will help deter bullying and prevent it from reaching dangerous proportions.

Gee, and I thought the indictments against 9 kids brought by certain very public super-heroic district attorney was supposed to have done that…!
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Tempers sure are flaring now that it is known that no serious injuries resulted from the collision between a Green Line MBTA train smashed into a jeep! Transit officials are crying “Foul!” against the athletes who had been in the jeep. Crimina-Defense-Attorne- Needing-type-Foul.

The crash took place this past Sunday around midnight as a Green Line trolley driver, traveling about 30 miles per hour, was heading westbound en route to stop at Greycliff Road and Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton. Yards from the Greycliff Road crossing, the driver says he noticed a black Jeep Cherokee at the intersection at Commonwealth Avenue.

According to an MBTA transit police report, the driver sounded the horn five times and then engaged the emergency stop. The jeep’s driver cut in front of the train as if attempting to make a U-turn onto Commonwealth.

WHAM!

The trolley struck the side of the Jeep, pushing it back onto Commonwealth Avenue. When the jeep stopped, according to the report, some of the its occupants got out, grabbed items that appeared to be alcoholic beverages, and then fled down Greycliff Road.
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The big day has arrived! It is your Constitutional right! You go on trial today! You just sat as the Boston prosecutor verbally toasted you on a stick in his opening statement. Now, you sit in anticipation as your lawyer approaches the jury panel.

He clears his throat. Always a crowd pleaser.

“Uh…..hi”, he tells them. “My name is Michael Mumbles and I represent…him.”

He gestures to you with his head, almost apologetically. It occurs to you that this was the same man who was pounding on his desk mere months ago, promising you a win and that he would “take no prisoners”.

“Just because they accuse my client of these things does not mean that he did them, you know”, he continues. He then launches into a monotone drone that focuses on legal terms and technicalities that would put even the most eager law student to sleep.

Something tells you you’re in trouble.
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After writing yesterday’s Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog, I went back to my daily business of practicing law. Then, I took a look at some of the latest news and commentaries regarding the indictments about which we “spoke” yesterday as well as the pending legislation regarding bullying.

I started with Boston.com, were I found the positive spin that, “So, finally, an adult in authority in South Hadley stepped up for Phoebe Prince.” This was, of course, applauding District Attorney Betsy Scheibel who has indicted nine youths who apparently bullied the late Phoebe Prince, 15. Ms. Prince tragically took her own life, presumably because of said bullying.

Part of the prosecutor’s stated rationale was that the bullying went far beyond typical bullying that we have seen amongst school peers since the invention of schools. Of course, yesterday, when we looked at the examples she listed…they did not seem to be very new at all.

Unspoken, of course, was any political ambitions the da might have, given that her office is a political one.

I remind you that this had already become a hot issue and one that is being kicked around by the legislature in the way of anti-bullying legislation.
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Here’s a twist on the old saying, “it’s like pulling teeth!” A former Massachusetts dentist will now need a criminal defense attorney to defend against charges of “clipping” teeth..

I am referring to Michael C., 51, a dentist formerly of Fall River, but now of Maryland (hereinafter, the “Defendant”). Boston’s Attorney General has indicted the Defendant for a number of fraudulent…and related…criminal acts.

In short, the Defendant is charged with allegedly using paper clips in dental work and then billing Medicaid for the stainless steel posts he should have used. The Defendant also stands indicted on a charge of submitting additional false claims to the Medicaid program using other dentists’ provider numbers and illegally prescribing prescription drugs.

The complainants of the charges are two-fold. One, of course, is the program that was billed. The other are the actual patients who allegedly received the “treatment”.
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Yesterday, I had to go to a local Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles. Now, I am a lawyer. I have some idea of how some of these things should work. I am also somewhat knowledgeable about the system, bureaucracy and red tape, including how simple things can be made very unsimple. The result? I walked out about 2 hours later (the ticket I was handed said I would be seen in 8 minutes) and with my goal still not reached. Not only that, but this inconvenience resulted in the first time I saw the clerk perform what I took to beng the closest she ever came to a smile.

What can one do? Well, today I can take the small step of delivering a blog about the RMV!

Well, sort of.

I direct your attention to Framingham, where sits a Middlesex grand jury which has returned indictments recently against Mr. Ahmed S., 30, (hereinafter, the “Defendant”). He had been arrested a month earlier due to an investigation which apparently revealed that he was falsifying drivers’ licenses, the AG’s office said.
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More bad choices in the Boston area. Another defendant who needed a lawyer.

And now…another statistic. one more white collar conviction.

Richard W., 42 (hereinafter, the “Defendant”) apparently worked as a practice assistant in the ear, nose and throat department of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. From January 2006 through April 2009, he is said to have stolen more than $1 million by stealing checks written to the department and by seeking fraudulent refunds for hearing aids and other items.

This is called the white collar crime of embezzlement.

On the 3rd, the Defendant pleaded guilty before the Honorable United States District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro to one count of health care theft and embezzlement, the US attorney’s office said in a statement.
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