Ruth O'Meara-Costello

On Monday March 22, 2021 the Suffolk County DA’s Office announced the Hinton Lab Initiative — a plan to identify a global resolution for any controlled substance conviction resulting from a Hinton Lab case between May 1, 2003 and August 30, 2012. DA Rollins’ office has pledged “to collaborate with the defense bar to identify a global resolution for any controlled substance conviction resulting from any analysis conducted at […]

In Commonwealth v. Vazquez Diaz, MACDL, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, and the Boston Bar Association submitted an amicus brief arguing that a superior court judge acted in violation of Mr. Vazquez Diaz’s rights when it ordered him to undergo a virtual suppression hearing, over his objection and despite his willingness to wait to hold the hearing until it is safe to do so […]

On January 4, 2021, MACDL filed an amicus letter, written by Attorney Amy Belger, in support of an application for Further Appellate Review in a case in which the trial judge concluded that members of the Narcotics Bureau of the Springfield Police Department intentionally destroyed evidence favorable to the defendant. A Springfield Police sergeant ordered the City Forester to remove trees near the scene in order to prevent the […]

On December 24, 2020, CPCS and MACDL, represented by the ACLU of Massachusetts, filed a complaint with the single justice of the SJC alleging that the Houses of Correction (HOCs) failure to conduct routine, comprehensive COVID-19 testing and to meaningfully reduce their populations, as well as five HOCs’ failure to provide meaningful, timely, and confidential modes of communication between incarcerated individuals and their lawyers, violate constitutional guarantees concerning cruel […]

On Monday, December 21, MACDL, CPCS, and ACLUM filed an amended petition in the Supreme Judicial Court alleging that Massachusetts Houses of Corrections still are not undertaking two essential steps to mitigate the threat of COVID-19 in communal living environments: routine, comprehensive COVID-19 testing, and meaningful population reductions, and that their failures violate the 8th Amendment and Article 26. We also argue that 5 facilities are violating the right […]

MACDL Amicus for Commonwealth v. Lopez

Unlike adult defendants, children in Massachusetts do not receive credit for time spent in detention pretrial. The Commonwealth has justified this practice by emphasizing differences between juveniles and adults. As MACDL writes in its brief:

Children are indeed different, but DYS’s argument perverts that principle in a misguided effort to treat them worse than their adult counterparts. The reality is that pretrial detention […]