Commonwealth v. Ballard (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-011-18)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 17-P-411 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. RONALD A. BALLARD. No. 17-P-411. Worcester. December 8, 2017. – February 2, 2018. Present: Sacks, Ditkoff, & Singh, JJ. Sex Offender. Practice, Civil, Sex offender. Practice, Criminal, Plea. Statute, Construction. Words, “Prisoner.” Civil action commenced in the Superior Court Department on February 4, 2014. A motion to dismiss was heard by Daniel M. Wrenn, J. Ellyn H. Lazar-Moore, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. John S. Day for the defendant. SACKS, J. The Commonwealth appeals from a judgment dismissing its petition to commit the defendant as a sexually dangerous person (SDP) pursuant to G. L. c. 123A, § 12. On the date the petition was filed, the defendant was serving a criminal sentence; some two and one-half years later, the defendant was allowed to withdraw the guilty pleas to the offenses for which he had been sentenced. This led a Superior Court judge to rule, based on his interpretation of Coffin v. Superintendent, Mass. Treatment Center, 458 Mass. 186 (2010), that the defendant was not a prisoner under G. L. c. 123A, § 12(b), at the time the petition was filed, and thus was not subject to being committed as an SDP. Concluding that the judge applied Coffin too broadly, we reverse. Background. In the 1980s, the defendant was convicted of a number of sexual offenses against women in both the Commonwealth and California. He received State prison sentences in both jurisdictions, completing his sentence in the Commonwealth in 2003, at which time the Commonwealth successfully petitioned to commit him to the Massachusetts Treatment Center (treatment center) as an SDP. Following a trial in which the defendant was found no longer sexually dangerous, he was discharged in 2007. In 2013, based on an incident in which the defendant approached a seventeen year old female working at a farm stand, criminal complaints issued from the District Court charging him with accosting or annoying a person of the opposite sex in violation of G. L. c. 272, § 53,[1] threatening to commit a crime in violation of G. L. c. 275, § 2, and intimidation of a witness in violation of G. L. c. 268, § 13B. In January, 2014, the defendant pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to concurrent sentences amounting to nine months in the house of correction, with credit for time served.[2] […]