Recently, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court further fleshed-out the law with respect to probable cause to arrest for street-level drug transactions.  Typically, these cases involve the police observing someone passing an object to another person under suspicious circumstances, such as when one car pulls alongside another in a parking lot, and the occupants of the…

In Commonwealth v. White (2016), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a Superior Court judge’s allowance of a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence found within the defendant’s cellphone, finding that the warrantless seizure of the cellphone was unreasonable, and that the subsequent search of the cellphone was similarly unlawful. The case involved a high school…

The end result of many criminal cases that are plea bargained or that end in a conviction, especially when the defendant has only a minor criminal record, is the imposition of a term of probation.  Typically, after a guilty plea or continuance without a finding (CWOF), the defendant leaves the courtroom and proceeds to the…