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CourtWatchMA Profile picture
CourtWatchMA
@CourtWatchMA
Community volunteers supporting neighbors + shifting power dynamics in #MA courts by exposing decisions of judges & prosecutors. @justicehealing @massbailfund
Mar 7, 2024 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
1. Sweeps target poor people of color in public housing with harsh sentences, often stacking charges on people unrelated to gang activity or on outer fringes (e.g. ).
2. Cox never mentioned the database. He praised BRIC + the gang unit. A sloppy conflation. bronx120.report
There's plenty to say about BRIC and the gang unit on their own terms regarding discriminatory enforcement, overbreadth & racial targeting.

But praising *the database* in this federal sweep isn't even factually supported by the police narrative in the article. #bospoli #mapoli The case involved federal law enforcement agents, Boston police, and several other agencies. But Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox gave a shout-out to the BRIC and the police department’s gang unit, formally known as the Youth Violence Strike Force, at the February 14 briefing convened by Acting US Attorney Joshua Levy to announce the arrests. “I want to particularly recognize the significant contributions of both our Youth Violence Strike Force as well as the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, who have been critical to this long investigation,” Cox said.
May 18, 2023 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
This piece thoroughly examines the extreme racial disparities in pretrial detention and 58A requests.

But there's a math error in this video: boston25news.com/news/lawmakers…

By these numbers, the percent of district court cases in Suffolk with a dangerousness hearing is 2.2%, not .02%. Screenshot from Boston25 in... That said, a bigger problem: the figure has a misleading denominator.

80% of MA cases involve a lead misdemeanor charge. The *vast* majority of misdemeanors are *statutorily ineligible* for these hearings.

The denominator should be cases with *eligible* offenses, not all cases.
May 15, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
🧵 Big day for equal protection litigation in criminal cases, with significant pronouncements from the MA Supreme Judicial Court.

In Van Rader, J. Gaziano for a unanimous court affirms that the selective enforcement standard in Com. v. Long applies to all types of policing! The issue having been squa... Justice Gaziano notes that, like traffic stops, pedestrian stops are deliberate choices by police officers, that proving a negative (people not stopped) is nearly impossible for defendants to do, and that the lack of data requires a totality standard to make EPC claims workable. For similar reasons, the th...The inaccessibility or unav...5 We note that the decision...
Apr 27, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
At some point policy proposals like this aren't accidental. Our highest court acknowledges traffic enforcement throughout MA targets Black & Brown people.

So policy like this? It's racist. "Disparities" aren't unintended consequences, they're foreseeable & probable. Purposeful. When commentators frame policy like this as being dense and unthinking--instead of knowing and intended to increase police power to stop the usual people in the usual way--it gives white supremacy an out.
Feb 20, 2021 • 13 tweets • 8 min read
Today the Mass. Appeals Court published a 3-2 decision upholding a racist stop & frisk of a Black 16-year-old girl in public housing at the urging of the @SCDAONews Appeals Unit.

Every day, @DARollins' Appeals Unit erodes the constitutional rights of poor people of color.

🧵 MILKEY, J. (dissenting in part, with whom Henry, J., joins). This case involved Samora Lopes, a BPD gang unit cop who the Supreme Judicial Court *already found* has a pattern of making unlawful, racially discriminatory traffic stops.

Lopes was acting on a 3-hour-old tip that some kids had a gun outside a housing development.
Oct 31, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
We hear there are now 63 confirmed positives at Norfolk, and people are being moved from single cells to 35-men dormitories.

A positive test does not always mean a positive case. But isolating all people together in one large group WILL spread the virus.
The DOC has shown reckless disregard in responding to COVID-19. It ignores the CDC best practice of *testing all staff* in the prisons. When an outbreak emerges, they conduct "facility-wide testing" BUT *excluding staff,* the primary vectors of bringing disease into a prison!
Apr 5, 2020 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
THREAD

1/ Some people may be released under the tinyurl.com/sjcruling! That's so important.

But let's get the facts. We broke down who can seek relief w/ @justicehealing.

This ruling creates relief beyond existing law for people jailed on bail revocation or a probation hold. 2/ People held pretrial on bail, bail revocation, or a probation hold can file a motion for review & get a hearing within 48 hours.

Anyone held on nonviolent/nonserious offenses* gets a presumption of release, which can be rebutted.
__
*Not in Appendix A: mass.gov/files/document…
Sep 4, 2019 • 6 tweets • 7 min read
Arraignments continue today from this weekend's arrests

The lead @nlgmass lawyer representing arrestees, @SusanBChurch11, was just TAKEN INTO CUSTODY on contempt for reading case law into the record about how denying nolle pros violated the law!!

Judge Sinnott is OUT OF CONTROL @nlgmass @SusanBChurch11 Today @SCDAONews ADAs are lawfully declining charges w/ Rule 16 nolle prosequis. We're grateful to @DARollins for her clarion leadership on this!

Dreadful, unlawful judicial behavior > > > new standard ADA practice for declining charges in all BMC courts!