News

September 22, 2020

MACDL and CPCS received a letter from Rachael Rollins, Suffolk County District Attorney, regarding the federal charges recently announced against nine current and retired Boston Police Department Officers. In the letter Rachel Rollins states, “I am deeply dismayed by the allegations outlined in federal court. If these allegations are true, these men and women have dishonored their badges by stealing taxpayer dollars on multiple occasions over a […]

September 21, 2020
Chauncey Wood, co-chair MACDL amicus committee

In the midst of an otherwise horrible week for Justice in America, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued a ground-breaking decision on racial justice on September 17, 2020. In Commonwealth v. Long, SJC-12868, the Court unanimously agreed that its previous remedy for addressing racially motivated traffic stops under the equal protection clause of the state and federal constitutions, a statistical […]

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 […]

July 31, 2020

Dear Chief Justices Gants, Carey, Ronquillo, Fabricant and Dawley,

On behalf of MACDL, we thank you for the opportunity to meet via Zoom on July 22, 2020, along with members from the Committee for Pubic Counsel Services, to discuss the issues raised in our July 14, 2020 letter to you. We are pleased and grateful that you expressed a willingness to listen to our concerns and to work with […]

June 15, 2020 — In reply to the Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court

MACDL’s Board of Directors and Racial Justice Committee take seriously the Supreme Judicial Court’s declaration that we all must all harness the power and privilege that comes with our professional accomplishments to end racial injustice. There is no neutrality in racism; failing to take aggressive measures allows racist […]

MACDL and CPCS are the plaintiffs in a petition to the SJC, represented by lawyers from the ACLU of Massachusetts, asking the court to take immediate action to limit outbreaks of COVID-19 by reducing the numbers of people who are incarcerated in Massachusetts jails, prisons, and houses of correction, in order “to mitigate the mortal harm that the COVID-19 pandemic will inflict upon incarcerated people, on corrections staff, […]