Commonwealth v. Clark (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-115-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us SJC-11815 COMMONWEALTH vs. TYRONE J. CLARK. Suffolk. March 2, 2015. – July 9, 2015. Present: Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, Duffly, Lenk, & Hines, JJ. Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Evidence, Scientific test, Exculpatory, Relevancy and materiality. Statute, Construction. Practice, Criminal, Postconviction relief, Discovery. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court on August 10, 1973. A postconviction motion for scientific or forensic analysis, filed on August 5, 2013, was heard by Thomas A. Connor, J. The Supreme Judicial Court on its own initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court. Neil D. Raphael for Tyrone J. Clark. Donna Jalbert Patalano, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. Lisa M. Kavanaugh & Ira L. Gant, Committee for Public Counsel Services, & Denise McWilliams & Chauncey B. Wood, for Committee for Public Counsel Services Innocence Program & others, amici curiae, submitted a brief. SPINA, J. On January 23, 1974, a Suffolk County jury convicted Tyrone J. Clark of rape, G. L. c. 265, § 22; unarmed robbery, G. L. c. 265, § 19; and kidnapping, G. L. c. 265, § 26. The Appeals Court affirmed the convictions in a published opinion. See Commonwealth v. Clark, 3 Mass. App. Ct. 481 (1975). On January 14, 2000, he filed a motion for a new trial, which was denied. Clark was paroled in 2005, but his parole was revoked when he pleaded guilty on May 25, 2006, to larceny over $ 250, G. L. c. 266, § 30 (1). In 2012, the Legislature enacted G. L. c. 278A, “An Act providing access to forensic and scientific analysis” (act). St. 2012, c. 38. “The enactment, which occurred in the wake of national recognition that ‘DNA testing has an unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty,’ District Attorney’s Office for the Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U.S. 52, 55 (2009), permits access to forensic and scientific evidence on the filing of a motion by an individual who has been convicted of a criminal offense, who consequently has been incarcerated, and who asserts factual innocence.” Commonwealth v. Wade, 467 Mass. 496, 497 (2014). See G. L. c. 278A, § 2. The purpose of the act was “to remedy the injustice of wrongful convictions of factually innocent persons by allowing access to analyses of biological […]