The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned a defendant's conviction for attempting to disseminate matter harmful to a minor under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 272 Section 28 and 31. The defendant was charged with a Massachusetts sex crime that would require him to have to register as a sex offender.
The case arose out of an effort to uncover online crimes involving child pornography and child enticement. As part of the investigation, an undercover police officer set up a fake online screen name and profile, pretending to be a 13 year-old, eighth grade student. The screen account that was set up, encouraged users to make contact through instant messaging.
The defendant was found guilty of having attempted to disseminate harmful matter to a minor as a result of the content of his instant messages. He was convicted and sentence to one year in prison according to the Boston Herald.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, vacated his conviction on the grounds that the statute he was convicted under did not define instant messaging as matter as defined in the statute. The SJC emphasized that "matter" is defined by the statute as any handwritten or printed material, visual representation, live performance or sound recording, including but not limited to books, magazines, motion picture films, pamphlets, pictures, figures, statues, plays, dances. Within this definition, online conversations were not included by the legislature. The court held that because the statute was a criminal statute, the court would have to construe the statute strictly in favor of the defendant. Applying this legal principle, the court held that the defendants' conduct did not fall within the conducted prohibited by the statute and vacated the conviction.
While the court acknowledged that the legislative intent would have been to criminalize the defendant's conduct, the court stressed that it could not expand the intent of the statute and called on the legislature to amend the statute to criminalize the defendant's conduct.
In this case, the Massachusetts criminal lawyer did a skillful job of preserving the issue of the language of the statute for appeal to ultimately prevail in what was clearly a difficult case to defend.
Attorney DelSignore is a Massachusetts criminal defense lawyer, defending sex crimes, throughout Massachusetts. Attorney DelSignore handles a variety of criminal cases including sex crimes, charges of indecent assault and battery, drug offense and domestic assault and battery charges. Call for a free consultation.
