Department of Justice Once Again Proves Its Loyalty to the President, Not the Rule of Law

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on the recent news that the Justice Department will seek dismissal of charges against Michael Flynn. Sarat suggests that because the decision does not seem to advance the fair administration of justice in this case, the court should take the unusual step of refusing to grant the prosecutor’s motion to dismiss.

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Commonwealth v. Tavares

Docket: SJC-12631

Opinion Date: May 6, 2020

Judge: Lowy

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Defendant's conviction of murder in the first degree on theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty and declined to exercise its power pursuant to Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 278, 33E to reduce the conviction to manslaughter, holding that there was no reversible error in the proceedings below. Specifically, the Supreme Judicial Court held (1) the trial judge did not err by denying Defendant's requests for a jury instruction pursuant to Commonwealth v. Croft, 345 Mass. 143 (1962); (2) the trial judge did not err by denying Defendant's motions for a required finding of not guilty under Croft because a rational jury could have found that Defendant was guilty of murder in the first degree on both the theories of premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty; and (3) there was no basis for reducing Defendant's sentence or ordering a new trial.