Commonwealth v. Bond (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-170-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 14-P-1991 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. RUARK BOND. No. 14-P-1991. October 26, 2015. Imprisonment, Credit for time served. Practice, Criminal, Sentence, Conduct of government agents. On May 28, 2013, the defendant pleaded guilty in Superior Court to unlawful possession of a firearm (G. L. c. 269, § 10[a]), possession of ammunition without a firearm identification card (G. L. c. 269, § 10[h]), possession of a class A controlled substance with the intent to distribute (G. L. c. 94C, § 32), and possession of a class B controlled substance with the intent to distribute (G. L. c. 94C, § 32A[c]). As part of the plea bargain, the Commonwealth agreed to dismiss various additional charges.[1] The defendant was sentenced to concurrent four- to five-year prison terms on three of the convictions, and a concurrent two-year term in the house of correction on the remaining conviction. Approximately one month before the defendant pleaded guilty to these charges, he had filed in the Boston Municipal Court a motion for new trial seeking to withdraw a previous guilty plea (entered September 14, 2010) to possession with intent to distribute cocaine.[2] The basis of that motion was that his 2010 plea was not voluntary because the Commonwealth in that case had been relying on a drug certificate signed by State chemist Annie Dookhan. See Commonwealth v. Scott, 467 Mass. 336, 348, 352-353 (2014). The Commonwealth eventually assented to that motion and — with the defendant having completed his sentence on the cocaine charge — agreed to file a nolle prosequi for that charge, which entered on April 22, 2014. The defendant then filed a motion in Superior Court seeking jail time credit for the 341 days he had served on the (now vacated) 2010 conviction, to be applied against his sentences on the new convictions.[3] Before us now is the defendant’s appeal from the denial of that motion. This case is governed by Commonwealth v. Holmes, 469 Mass. 1010 (2014). In that case, the Supreme Judicial Court clarified that the reversal of a conviction does not entitle a defendant to credit for jail time served on that conviction against a sentence for a subsequent unrelated offense, even where the second offense was committed before the first conviction was reversed. Id. at 1012-1013. In Holmes, the court “le[ft] open the possibility of allowing [jail time] credit for time served on a completed […]