Commonwealth v. Gabriel M. , A Juvenile, DAR-26078 – The Youth Advocacy Division sought permission to submit a letter in support of the juvenile’s application for Direct Appellate Review. The case raises the question: For the purposes of utilizing an “interested adult” during interrogation of a juvenile, does the Commonwealth bear the burden of showing that the adult was sufficiently interested? If so, what must be shown by the Commonwealth?
Commonwealth v. Odgren, SJC-11573 – There are two issues presented on appeal that implicate juvenile justice concerns:
- Over objection, the judge read to the jury two SJC Model Jury Instructions on Homicide: that the jury could infer malice from the defendant’s intentional use of a dangerous weapon (a knife) and that the jury could infer that the defendant intended the natural and probable consequences of his actions. Thus, from the use of a knife, the jury was permitted to infer the two contested issues in the case: malice and an intent to kill.
- The trial judge denied John Odgren’s motion to suppress the jail recordings of his telephone calls and visits with his parents and others over the seven and a half month period of time that he was held pre-trial at a Department of Youth Services facility. As the trial judge observed, Odgren was “a juvenile pretrial detainee with Asperger’s Syndrome who had no means [to] communicat[e] privately with his parents.” Nonetheless, the trial court denied all of Mr. Odgren’s constitutional claims and the recordings of his calls and visits with his parents and others were played throughout the trial. With respect to his right as a juvenile detainee to freely communicate with his parents and others, the trial court ruled: “Despite numerous sources confirming that parents (and arguably other relatives and friends) play a vital role in nurturing juveniles through the legal system, this court cannot discern any well-defined constitutional right that entitles sixteen-year-old pretrial detainees who are already represented by legal counsel to unmonitored, unrecorded contact with their parents or other non-attorney advisors.”The court denied the motion, stating: “[A]ttorneys may act as proxies between juvenile detainees and their parents in passing along advice and preparing a legal defense.[1]”
[1] Odgren proffered the testimony of attorney Janice Bassil as an expert juvenile defense attorney to testify to the importance of parents’ private communications with their children in cases such as this. The judge, over objection, excluded the proffered testimony.