Commonwealth v. Long (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-035-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-11253 COMMONWEALTH vs. DERYCK LONG. Norfolk. October 11, 2016. – February 24, 2017. Present: Gants, C.J., Hines, Gaziano, Lowy, & Budd, JJ. Homicide. Constitutional Law, Assistance of counsel. Evidence, Exculpatory, Wiretap, Result of illegal search. Cellular Telephone. Electronic Surveillance. Practice, Criminal, Capital case, Assistance of counsel. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on March 9, 2006. Pretrial motions to suppress evidence were heard by Janet L. Sanders, J.; the cases were tried before Kenneth J. Fishman, J., and a motion for a new trial, filed on August 4, 2014, was heard by him. Robert F. Shaw, Jr., for the defendant. Pamela Alford, Assistant District Attorney (Craig F. Kowalski, Assistant District Attorney, also present) for the Commonwealth. GAZIANO, J. A Superior Court jury found the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, on a theory of deliberate premeditation, in the shooting death of Jamal Vaughn (victim) on January 9, 2016, in Quincy. Before us is the defendant’s appeal from his convictions and from the denial of his motion for a new trial. He claims that his trial counsel’s uninformed decision not to introduce cell site location information (CSLI) to contradict the testimony of a key prosecution witness constituted ineffective assistance of counsel, and that it was error for a motion judge to deny his pretrial motion to suppress the testimony of the same witness because the Commonwealth had obtained his testimony as a result of an illegal wiretap that this court previously had ordered suppressed. See Commonwealth v. Long, 454 Mass. 542 (2009). We conclude that the defendant was not deprived of the effective assistance of trial counsel, and that there was no error in the motion judge’s determination that the witness’s testimony was sufficiently attenuated from the suppressed wiretap evidence to dissipate the taint of illegality. Accordingly, we affirm the conviction and the denial of the motion for a new trial, and decline to exercise our authority under G. L. c. 278, § 33E, to disturb the verdict. Facts. We recite the facts that the jury could have found, reserving certain facts for our analysis of the particular issues. From late 2005 to early 2006, the defendant would frequently stay with his girl friend, Janet Ojo, at her house on Franklin Street in Quincy. […]
Commonwealth v. Long (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-167-16)
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 15-P-925 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. DAMIEN LONG. No. 15-P-925. Plymouth. September 14, 2016. – November 23, 2016. Present: Green, Wolohojian, & Massing, JJ. Larceny. False Pretenses. Intent. Evidence, Intent. Practice, Criminal, Required finding. Complaint received and sworn to in the Plymouth Division of the District Court Department on December 16, 2011. The case was tried before James M. Sullivan, J. Amy Muscato-Wolter for the defendant. Jessica Heaton, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. MASSING, J. The defendant, Damien Long, prepared an estimate to do some home improvement work for a married couple, who owned a house in Marshfield. He cashed their deposit check, bought some supplies, performed a few days of minimal work that was not to the homeowners’ satisfaction, and then abandoned the job. A week later he slipped a final invoice under the door, purporting to show that the homeowners owed him money. On those facts, he was charged and convicted in District Court, after a jury trial, of larceny over $ 250 by false pretenses.[1] To sustain the conviction, the Commonwealth was required to prove that at the time the defendant promised the homeowners he would do the work, inducing them to write him a check, he did so with the intention of never performing the job. Because we conclude that the evidence did not establish that essential element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, we reverse. Background. We begin by summarizing the facts presented in the Commonwealth’s case-in-chief in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. See Commonwealth v. Latimore, 378 Mass. 671, 677 (1979). Joseph and Maryann Watts,[2] the homeowners, wanted new windows, new window sills, a new sliding door, and some other minor improvements done on their house in Marshfield. Joseph made some calls and eventually contacted the defendant. On September 23, 2011, the defendant met the Wattses at their house to discuss the work they wanted done. They agreed on a price of about $ 32,000 for the entire project, and Joseph gave the defendant a check for $ 11,800, dated either September 25 or 26, 2011, as a down payment. The deposit was for “purchasing the windows and getting those in,” as well as the “trim and all that stuff [the defendant] need[ed] to finish it.” The […]
Local Veterans Face Long Waits for VA Benefits
Returning veterans are now facing a new enemy at home—long wait times for their disability claims. The waiting times started increasing in 2010 when U.S. troops were withdrawn from Iraq causing a dramatic uptick in first-time filers, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting. The data found that in most regional VA offices, not only did waiting times increase, but they vary dramatically with location: about 508 days in Baltimore, Maryland and 134 days in Fargo, North Dakota. The national average now stands at about 11 months, which is dramatically higher than in 2009 when it was 116 days. Claims sent to the VA’s Boston office take on average 411.6 days to process a disability claim. That’s more than 13 months before the average claimant gets a decision. The backlog has also partly been blamed on the VA still using paper to process their claims. In 2011, the Department started implementing a computerized system in several of its regional offices. However, despite spending $ 537 million on the new program and employing 3,300 claims processors, 97 percent of veterans’ claims are still on paper. Still, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki pledged back in March that the VA will end the enormous backlog by 2015. While Memorial Day, which is celebrated this Monday, is officially a day for remembering and honoring military personnel who died in the service of their country, in practice it’s often a day to recognize living veterans locally. The data above was obtained by The Center for Investigative Reporting from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and is updated weekly. South End Patch