The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided Tuesday that juvenile court judges can now dismiss criminal complaints against juveniles if there is no evidence of probable cause before an arraignment is held.
David Yannetti, a Boston criminal defense lawyer, said the ruling allows for fair challenges without ramifications on an individual’s record.
“If the police make a bad arrest or if a complaint is issued without probable cause, you should be able to fight that without having your client’s record blemished by the bad arrest,” he said.
The case, Commonwealth v. Humberto H., began in 2011 when a complaint was filed toward an adolescent charging him with an account of possession of marijuana and the intent to further distribute it.
Tuesday’s decision passed in a 4-2 ruling with Justice Ralph Gants writing the majority decision and said it was “offensive to arraign a child … just to put it on the child’s record.”
In order for there to be probable cause, the complaint application has to include “reasonably trustworthy information sufficient to warrant a reasonable or prudent person in believing that the defendant has committed the offense,” the ruling stated.
There must also be evidence to support probable cause for each individual charge. For example, in Commonwealth v. Humberto H. there was definitive evidence for the possession charge, but none for the intent to distribute the drugs, according to the ruling.
The two dissenting judges cited past cases and said juveniles should be arraigned before their charges are dropped, otherwise it would be a loophole to existing procedures.
“The rules of criminal procedure contemplate a motion practice that does not become engaged until the arraignment and which unfolds after arraignment,” Justice Francis Spina said in the dissent, which was backed by Justice Robert Cordy. “The reasoning of the court for hearing a motion to dismiss before arraignment is contrary to the procedure set forth in the rules.”
Yannetti said the court’s decision supports the idea that juveniles should not have a mark on their criminal records, hurting their chances for future jobs and other opportunities that require background checks when the charge had been dropped, and this is a necessary rule because police do not have many guidelines stopping them from arresting someone.
“There are very few checks and balances to prevent the police from arresting people without probable cause,” he said. “It’s basically just a police officer’s decision to put handcuffs on somebody. If it later turns out that they don’t have probable cause to the arrest and you’ve successfully fought that in court, there’s no way to un-ring the bell. Somebody’s already been arraigned in court, you’ve already fought it, but the records still all there. This changes that.”
Several residents said they had mixed feelings about the decision.
Ryan Giammo, 22, of Allston, said this rule would have to be lenient enough to apply to a variety of cases.
“It all depends on a lot of individual circumstances,” he said. “There’s a lot of interesting ways of perceiving probable cause. For example, if it’s some 11- or 12-year-old kid there’s rehabilitation time at that point, but if they’re 17 or 18, they can still theoretically be tried as an adult.”
Giammo said the consequences of this rule would also be different for each individual case.
“As far as wiping the record clean, it’s not necessarily a matter of whether or not it gives them an opportunity to do it again or not, because depending on what the crime was, the age group, they might just do it again anyway, whether they get caught or not,” he said. “On the other hand, if they’re already in court, that might be enough of a scare tactic to prevent them from doing that in the future.”
Kevin Brown, 48, of South Boston, said this is forgiving for young people who may not really know the harm they are doing.
“Juveniles are capable of doing things that really they’re not old enough to understand the full ramifications,” he said. “Obviously it’s not black and white, it depends on the circumstances, how close they’re getting to adulthood … but it’s a good thing that they have the ability to somehow not carry what they’ve done through the rest of their life, given that they probably don’t understand what they’ve done.”
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