Most Clerk Magistrate’s Hearings in Massachusetts district courts are remote now, and it works fine, both practically, and most importantly, results are usually good for defendants.

It’s been over a year since the COVID-19 pandemic began. It has impacted nearly every part of American life, and the court system is no exception. Millions of people didn’t know what Zoom remote video conference calls were a year ago but now use them regularly for work and to connect with family.

On election day in 2016, Massachusetts voters passed a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in the state. Massachusetts will join Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washingon DC, and Washington State who had all previously legalized, along with California, Maine, and Nevada which just passed legalization in this election.

Massachusetts voters have historically supported marijuana laws reform efforts. Back in 2008, we voted to decriminalize possession of under 1oz in down to a civil violation and followed it up in 2012 with an initiative for allowing medical marijuana. So in spite of widespread institutional political opposition, it wasn’t a huge surprise that this passed. [Read more…]

Augmented reality games that require moving around and interacting with the virtual world are extremely popular, but are quite dangerous when playing from your car.

The new Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, along with classics like Pokemon Go an Ingress encourage you to explore the world and gather objects and resources, but are unsafe if you are also trying to drive, and can even lead to criminal charges.

The social media app Snapchat is a phenomenon among millennials.  “On any given day, Snapchat reaches 41% of all 18 to 34 year-olds in the United States.” Social media statistics reported in June, 2016 showed that Snapchat has an average daily use base of approximately 150 million. In the same month, it was reported that Snapchat had officially surpassed Twitter in daily user volume. The photo-sharing app’s surge in popularity has been nothing short of meteoric.

But there are dark sides to how this app can be used. What is commonly know about snapchat is that “snaps”, i.e. Snapchat posts, mostly images or videos, disappear after 10 seconds, or, in some cases, 24 hours.  There have been many public cases where this ability can be used in cyberbullying, or to send inappropriate or illegal sexually explicit messages.

But recent news reports suggest that the snapchat speed filter that captures a user’s rate of speed in real-time may be encouraging extremely dangerous and potentially deadly speeding behind the wheel.

The annual “Blarney Blowout”, is a party weekend at UMass Amherst with a reputation for rowdiness. This year there were only a small number of arrests and a typical number of citations for minors with alcohol.

There was a huge police presence from surrounding communities, and students were told by police that they couldn’t gather in large groups.

The reporting suggests serious police state overkill. Some of the casual police techniques noted in the Daily Hampshire Gazette are a little chilling:

[Read more…]