By Rupa Shenoy | WGBH | December 1, 2015

The murder trial of 16-year-old Philip Chism case is playing out as the state and country dramatically changes the way it adjudicates juvenile crime. For the defense team, that means there are very specific things to prove as the jury decides whether Chism is or is not guilty by reason of insanity.

Prosecutors for the Commonwealth rested their case Monday against Chism, who is charged with first-degree murder with atrocity and cruelty. Chism, of Danvers, is charged as an adult in the death of his math teacher, Colleen Ritzer. Continue reading »

In August 2014, CLBB partnered with the American Psychological Association to submit an Amicus Brief to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) which outlined the latest neuroscientific understanding of eyewitness memory. The following January, the SJC issued an opinion in Commonwealth v. Gomes that changed eyewitness testimony law. This article discusses the reforms the SJC is making to account for the fallibility of memory.

By Daniel S. Medwed | WGBH | September 25, 2015

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), the state’s highest, enjoys a storied place in the annals of progressive legal thought.  Among its many notable achievements, the SJC laid the groundwork for the national recognition of same-sex marriage by the U.S. Supreme Court last June through its innovative 2003 decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the first major case upholding the right of gay couples to wed.

The SJC may well be on the cusp of another trailblazing decision that could also legal resonate across the nation. It has recently taken up an issue near and dear to the hearts of many critics of American criminal justice policy: the problem of eyewitness misidentification.  Continue reading »