Cases scheduled to be heard in November 2018.

Byline: Mass. Lawyers Weekly Staff

Following is a list of the cases scheduled to be argued before the Supreme Judicial Court in November. The summaries of the issues presented in the cases have been prepared by Lawyers Weekly. The SJC, in cooperation with Suffolk University Law School, provides live and archived webcasts of its arguments at www.suffolk.edu/sjc.

MONDAY, NOV. 5

Commonwealth v. Fredericq

SJC-12572

The issues are: (1) whether the judge properly allowed the defendant's motion to suppress evidence found in his bedroom and in a crawl space on grounds that the police seized it by exploiting the (concededly) unlawful tracking of a cellphone using cell site location information; (2) whether the commonwealth established that the search and seizure were sufficiently attenuated from the unlawful tracking to dissipate the taint; and (3) whether the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the crawl space.

Jessica Kenny, Christine M. Kiggen and Nathaniel Kennedy for the commonwealth

Jason Benzaken for the defendant-appellee

Commonwealth v. Vasquez

SJC-12556

The issue is whether the single justice either committed an error of law or abused his discretion in denying a first-degree-murder defendant's G.L.c. 211, 3, petition seeking review of the bail judge's order holding the defendant without right to bail.

Maximilian Bennett and Katherine E. McMahon for the commonwealth

Merritt Schnipper for the defendant-appellant

Commonwealth v. Lugo

SJC-12546

The issues are whether imposing a mandatory sentence of life with the possibility of parole on a defendant convicted of second-degree murder for a homicide he committed as a juvenile violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or article 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, and whether a juvenile defendant convicted of second-degree murder is entitled to an individualized sentencing hearing.

Stephanie Martin Glennon and Pamela Alford for the commonwealth

Katherine C. Essington for the defendant-appellant

Arias-Villano, et al. v. Chang & Sons Enterprises, et al.

SJC-12548

In a case involving an indoor bean sprout facility, the issue is whether the exemption for payment of overtime wages applicable to "laborers engaged in agriculture and farming on a farm," G.L.c. 151, 1A[19], applies to persons who work at a facility where food is both grown and processed, but who are engaged in tasks associated with food processing, cleaning and maintenance, rather than food production, cultivation, growing or harvesting.

Leticia Medina-Richman and Susan Garcia Nofi for the plaintiff-appellants

Alexander Olsen, David Gabor and Sandra E. Lundy for the defendant-appellees

Commonwealth v. Harris

SJC-12607

The issue is whether G.L.c. 269, 10, which requires a person to have a license in order to carry and possess a firearm in Massachusetts, impermissibly shifts the burden to a defendant to produce evidence of an exemption to the statute. A jury rejected the defendant-appellant's argument that he was not living with his girlfriend in Massachusetts but was merely traveling through the state and therefore did not need a license because he was properly licensed in his home state of New Hampshire. He is now raising a Second Amendment and due process challenge to the statute under which he was convicted.

Ashlee R. Mastrangelo and Thomas D. Ralph for the commonwealth

Christopher DeMayo for the defendant-appellant

Reznik v. Urzia, et al.

SJC-12505

The issue is whether the single justice's denial of the plaintiff-appellant's petition under G.L.c. 211, 3, was in error or an abuse of discretion. The defendants-appellees had been granted summary judgment in Concord District Court. The plaintiff-appellant appealed to the Appellate Division of the District Court-Northern Division, challenging the way the trial...