Articles Posted in Felonies and Violent Crimes

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In what her Boston criminal defense lawyer is calling the “second-most painful thing to ever happen to her,” Lakeisha Gadson is on trial for the Massachusetts involuntary manslaughter of her 8-year-old son. Liquarry Jefferson was accidentally shot by his cousin, now 10, in 2007 with a handgun owned by the victim’s half-brother, Jayquan McConnico, then 15. If convicted, Gadson faces a maximum 20-years behind bars. She also is charged with Massachusetts assault and battery on a child with substantial injury, reckless endangerment of a child, misleading police, and firearms violations.

Prosecutors are holding Gadson accountable for her younger son’s death because they say that she allowed McConnico to keep a loaded gun in a dresser that was easily accessible to children. Gadson maintains that she never gave McConnico permission to own a gun and that she didn’t know it was in their home. The teenager was also charged in his younger brother’s death and with the reckless and wanton storage of an unregistered pistol in an area that a child could reach. He pleaded guilty to the charges and will stay at a youth detention center until he turns 21.

On Wednesday, Jefferson’s cousin testified about the accidental Roxbury shooting. He said that his cousin showed him the gun, which they both thought was not loaded. The boy accidentally pulled the trigger, shooting Jefferson in the stomach. Jefferson was pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center.

Gadson, 33, has five children. She originally told police that gang members had forced their way into the apartment but later recanted her story and admitted that her nephew accidental shot her son.

Boston, Massachusetts involuntary manslaughter is a serious crime that involves the accidental killing of another person because of criminal or reckless negligence. A person charged with this crime is someone that prosecutors do not believe intentionally intended to kill the victim.

10-year-old testifies he killed his cousin by accident, Boston.com, August 3, 2010
Mom on trial in Liquarry’s death, Boston Herald, August 2, 2010

Related Web Resources:
Manslaughter, Cornell Law School
Murder v. Manslaughter, Nolo Continue reading

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Here is something a Boston Criminal Lawyer does not see every day. The father of a tragically deceased daughter, who’s death the Commonwealth is looking use as a tool of political expediency, is showing the compassion.

You remember the word “compassion”, don’t you? It is the word I used when discussing the tragedy and the problem of bullying in the first place.

Yes, I am referring to the father of the late Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide earlier this year. The local prosecutor decided to blame the death on local bullies and take the extra step of indicting the kids. Now, with Ms. Prince dead, other potential reasons for the suicide coming to light, her father, unlike the “cool heads” of law enforcement, is said to be seeking “justice, not vengeance”.

Jeremy Prince, the father, in an interview with the online publication slate.com, said he would be willing to ask a judge for leniency if his daughter’s alleged tormentors expressed their remorse in open court.
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Crime, itsel, is not particularly seasonal. It happens all the time in the Boston area. However, through my years as a Boston criminal defense attorney, I have noted that certain crimes seem to occur more often during certain seasons. Summer is a season where there is often a spike in certain crimes, for example.

The Rock star “Meatloaf” once began a hit song with the line, “On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?” After various lines seemingly meant to understand the original question, the answer was “Yes”.

The image of hot summer nights is often used to portray passonate and, often, violent, occurences.

This is not limited to music or fiction.

We often see what might otherwise be verbal arguments escalate into physical altercations. Maybe it is the heat that makes tempers more flammable. For example, on Saturday, I wrote about a woman who was shot by police after she allegedly assaulted them with a knife. This was, of course, after she had assaulted someone else at home with the knife. This ended tragically…the police shot and killed her.

This is also a story which may bear a closer look this week, by the way.
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Jaime Collazo and Christopher Colecchi have been arrested and arraigned in a Massachusetts criminal case involving a stolen car that had two sleeping children in it. The alleged car theft and kidnapping are said to have occurred early on the morning of July 12. The two Worcester men are accused of stealing a 2002 Toyota Sienna from outside a Gulf gas station while its driver was in the station.

Police were contacted and within minutes an officer found the car parked at the corner of Lafayette and Scott. The children were still in the vehicle and hadn’t been harmed.

Following a foot chase, Collazo was arrested and charged with Massachusetts kidnapping and trespassing. He is accused of forcing his way into the building where police found him.

Meantime, Colecchi, who is accused of then stealing another car, was pursued by cops on the I-290 first in cars and then on foot after he crashed the vehicle. Colecchi is charged with two counts of kidnapping, operating a vehicle as to endanger, receiving a stolen motor vehicle, leaving the scene of property damage, operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license, and possession of Class B substance. His criminal defense lawyer told the Telegram that the 36-year-old man is being overcharged. He says that whoever took the first car got out at once upon discovering that there were children inside the vehicle.

Van Stolen With Sleeping Children Inside, WCVB, July 13, 2010
Two suspects arrested for kidnapping, Telegram.com, July 12, 2010

Related Web Resource:
Crimes against the Person, General Laws of Massachusetts Continue reading

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Gee, it seems like only yesterday that this Boston criminal defense attorney was going against the grain and calling the indictment of six kids from South Hadley a senseless exercise of political grandstanding…or words to that effect. Don’t believe that I saw what everybody else was heralding as “heroic” as folly? Check out my postings since January as well as my comments on the equally “heroic” legislation on both the blog and Fox25!

Now, a couple of developments have some people reconsidering the events.

When 15-year-old Phoebe Prince committed suicide in January, six fellow South Hadley students were blamed for relentlessly bullying her. It was an easy fix for SuperDA Elizabeth Scheibel – indict them all and ruin their lives.

Whoops!

A new report shows there may have been factors other than bullying that led to the death of the South Hadley student.

Court documents, recently obtained by Emily Bazelon of the online magazine Slate, contain police interviews with Phoebe’s mother, classmates, teachers and administrators that tell a different story; one that suggests the teen’s troubles extended beyond the halls of South Hadley High.
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Sex cases are a funny thing. That is, “funny” as in “strange”. In a country wherein we say that we prize the presumption of innocence, we really don’t act like we like said presumption very much.

Currently, I am handling a high profile case about child pornography. Already, the press is interested. This, of course, is natural and is the job of the media. However, I am troubled not by the fact that it is newsworthy, but the reaction of people. Any passer-by who is questioned about the matter seems to have already formulated the verdict of “guilty”. People are shocked that “this has happened”, except that a man’s good deeds have been completely disregarded because of the new accusations. Other than that, nothing else has been proven to have “happened”.

What is even more troubling is the aftermath.

I can still locate articles from 2008 when another client of mine was arrested and charged with rape involving a child. People were interested then. Well, for the last two years, we fought against the “assumption of guilt” while trying to remind everybody else that a “presumption of innocence” was rumored to still exist. Finally, two years later, my client was completely exonerated…as in “Not Guilty”. Out of curiosity last night, I cruised the internet to find mention of the fact that my client, who attempts to resurrect his life now that he has been acquitted, has been found not guilty.

Big surprise – nary a whisper.
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The Supreme Judicial Court has overturned Joann Sliech-Brodeur’s Massachusetts first-degree murder conviction. Sliech-Brodeur was convicted of killing her husband Joseph Brodeur, who was stabbed 34 times with a kitchen knife and may have sustained blunt force head trauma from a “pry bar” on July 28, 2004.

During Sliech-Brodeur’s criminal defense trial, the defense claimed that Sliech-Brodeur’s long-standing mental issues were made worse by Brodeur’s intentions to divorce her. A psychologist who testified on her behalf said that Sliech-Brodeur doesn’t remember stabbing her husband.

In February 2006, a jury rejected Sliech-Brodeur’s defense that she was not responsible for stabbing her husband because she was mentally ill. The then 61-year-old woman was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Now, however, the state’s highest court is saying that the discovery process that took place during the trial violated criminal procedure rules (including the state’s limitations on discovery in insanity cases) and prejudiced the West Springfield woman’s Massachusetts murder case. The court says that the psychiatric expert for the prosecution was given information he should not have obtained and that the defense should not have had to give prosecutors statements and notes she had made for her own psychiatric expert.

Finding that Sliech-Brodeur was “unconstitutionally forced to help the state convict her,” the court is ordering a new trial.

SJC overturns murder conviction for West Springfield woman, Boston.com, July 19, 2010
Mass. court orders new trial in husband’s death, Boston Herald, July 19, 2010
Woman guilty of first-degree murder in husband’s death, Mass Live, February 24, 2006

Related Web Resources:
Murder, Cornell University Law School
General Laws of Massachusetts
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The criminal trial of Vernon Thompson on two counts of Massachusetts rape is now under way. Thompson, 40 is accused of sexually assaulting a Newton teenager while he was a psychiatric patient at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain in 2008.

He is accused of taking the girl, then 14, to an area of the hospital where there were no security cameras and sexually assaulting her. His Boston criminal defense lawyer is asking jurors to remember that the defendant was a mental health patient when the allegedMassachusetts sexual crime happened. She also noted that because of his diminished mental capacity, he was incapable of understanding his actions or conforming to the law.

Diminished Mental Capacity Defense
Due to mental illness, a psychological disorder, or other health issues, some people who’ve committed a crimes lack the capacity to understand that their actions constituted a criminal act. Evidence of diminished capacity can be presented to a jury as part of the defense as they consider whether to find a defendant guilty or not guilty of a crime.

Massachusetts is zealous when it comes to pursuing people charged with sexual crimes and it is important that you are represented by a Boston criminal defense lawyer that can secure the best outcome possible for your case. A conviction as a sex offender can land you in prison for years, place you on the Massachusetts sex offender registry for life, and likely have serious repercussions on your career and personal life.

Girl, 16, testifies at rape case, Boston.com, July 14, 2010
Hospital Rape Case To Begin, WCVB, July 6, 2010 Continue reading

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Ayanna Woodhouse is charged with Boston aggravated assault and battery and manslaughter in the death of a six-month-old fetus. The 25-year-old woman was indicted on Friday by a Suffolk County Grand Jury. They rendered their decision after hearing testimony from medical experts who said that under normal circumstances the baby could have lived outside the womb. At her arraignment on Monday, she pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges.

According to authorities, the Wellesley woman punched and kicked a pregnant woman during a brawl in April at Tulip Nail, a Boston nail salon. Following the incident, the fetus was delivered by emergency C-section but died. According to the medical examiner, the placenta became detached from the uterus. Woodhouse is related to the baby’s father.

Woodhouse’s Boston criminal defense lawyer says that it is unclear who began the fight. Per a Boston police report, after the two women left the salon the pregnant woman followed Woodhouse in her car and they reportedly continued their dispute. According to the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office, there was not enough evidence to establish that any intent to kill was involved. Massachusetts is one of the US states that will pursue homicides of unborn children who could have otherwise survive outside the womb.

A conviction for Massachusetts manslaughter can land a defendant in prison for up to 20 years. This is a serious criminal charge and in many cases the accused never intended to harm the victim.

Wellesley woman pleads not guilty to harming fetus, Boston.com, July 12, 2010
Woman indicted in death of fetus, Boston Herald, July 12, 2010

Related Web Resource:
Fetal Homicide State Laws, National Conference of State Legislature Continue reading

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Can a baseball bat be considered a dangerous weapon in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? As a Boston attorney for longer than I am in the mood to admit, I have seen cases where a pen, a box and even a shoe is considered a dangerous weapon by the law. So, it should be no surprise that a baseball bat, ball or even a glove can be considered dangerous weapons.

It is a lesson learned the hard was for 18-year-old Buzzards Bay resident Daniel M. (hereinafter, the “Defendant”), if he did not know it beforehand. Currently, he is being held on $5,000 bail after he allegedly beat a family member with an aluminum baseball bat.

Yes, that would make this a case of domestic violence.

The Defendant was arraigned in Falmouth District Court Tuesday morning after being arrested for allegedly hitting the 43-year-old man (hereinafter, the “Unnamed Complainant”) in the head with the bat at around 12:15 a.m. yesterday outside a Buzzards Bay home.

According to law enforcement, the Defendant struck the Unnamed Complainant with the bat after the latter attempted to leave after the two had had an argument.

When the investigating authorities arrived, they found the Unnamed Complainant lying in the driveway, unconscious and bleeding from the head, Bourne police said. He was taken by MedFlight helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston early yesterday morning, according to Bourne police.
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