News

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 […]

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 […]