On the SJC docket: A 1950s Mass. gun law and 27,000 DUI cases

December is a busy month for everyone, including the justices of the highest court in Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court. The court is dealing with cases that could have major implication for what evidence is allowed in criminal courtrooms. GBH News legal analyst and Northeastern law professor Daniel Medwed joined Morning Edition co-hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel to explain. This transcript has been lightly edited.

Jeremy Siegel: The SJC just wrapped up its oral arguments for appellate cases in 2022, put wrapping on its gift of legal cases like many of us are right now. So tell us about some of the cases that have caught your eye this month.

Daniel Medwed: Great. I'll add a bow to that wrapping.

Paris Alston: You know, a good bow really makes the difference, I gotta say.

Medwed: It does. It's everything. So the first one that jumped out at me is a gun possession case from Watertown. We all know that Massachusetts has one of the toughest sets of gun laws in the country, and one of them is known as Chapter 269, Section 10A. And it makes it a crime to knowingly possess a gun in your car, except — there are a number of exemptions here — except if you're in or on your place of business or your residence. So the idea is we don't want people driving around with guns in their cars. But if you're going to do it, you should be at home or at your place of work, a place where you might want to protect yourself. Essentially, that's the idea.

So here's what happened in this case: A confidential informant called the police to say that a man named Carlos Guardado was driving around Watertown with a gun in his backpack. The police found his car in a parking lot outside an AutoZone store. They observed Guardado working at the AutoZone. They even saw him change a windshield wiper for a customer in the parking lot. And when Guardado was done and went back to his car, they confronted him and they searched his car. And get this: They found a gun, not a backpack — but they found a gun in the glove box of his car.

Alston: So a couple of things are coming to mind here, Daniel, because for one, I'm like, what if he was driving to work, wouldn't that put him in the category of having it at his workplace? But also the fact that there wasn't actually a backpack in the vehicle, which was what the initial search was for, right?

Medwed: Exactly. That's one of the major problems here, Paris, which is a potential Fourth Amendment violation: That because there was a disconnect between the confidential informant's tip and the location of the gun in the car, there's an argument that the legitimacy of the police search is called into question. And Guardado raised that issue at trial. He filed what's called a motion to suppress, to basically preclude the prosecution from using the gun evidence at trial based on the idea that this was an illegitimate search. However, the trial judge rejected that motion, said this was a lawful search, and the gun evidence came in against Guardado. To add insult to injury, and this goes to your first point, Paris — the judge told the jury, hey, the AutoZone is where Guardado worked. That doesn't include the parking lot. The parking lot is not part of his place of business.

Alston: Even though he was changing the windshield wiper there.

Medwed: Yeah, exactly. And where are you going to park your car except in a parking lot? But he was convicted of that crime, the Section 10A crime, as well as a raft of other criminal charges.

Siegel: To ask just a little bit more about this one, Daniel, do you think the defendant has a chance to win an appeal in this case?

Medwed: I do. And here's why: There are two reasons. I think the first relates to the plain language of this law, that you are exempt from prosecution if you have your gun in a car in or on your place of business. The inclusion of that last phrase, in or on, would seem to suggest that your place of business goes beyond the mere structure, the mere building where you work. And it relates to the premises. So the interpretation of this exemption shouldn't hinge on whether there is an enclosed parking garage in your place of work, so you're in your place of work as opposed to an external parking lot. The second reason is really public policy. When the legislature created this exemption to the gun in your car crime, the idea in 1957 was to create a safe space where you could protect yourself. And your home or your place of work are places where, in the estimation of the legislature, you should deserve to potentially have a gun. Now, whether we agree with that or not is sort of beside the point. The Legislature agreed with that 60 years ago. So I think there's a decent chance he could win on appeal, but he's also been convicted of all these other crimes. So it's not as if his slate will be wiped clean.

Alston: So, Daniel, let's look at another case that's on the docket. Was there anything else that really caught your eye on this month's calendar?

Medwed: The second one that really jumped out at me — I'm always interested in the good old state crime lab scandal because we've had a few of them in Massachusetts. There have been revelations about improprieties in what's called the Office of Alcohol Testing, which failed, apparently, to adequately calibrate a breathalyzer that was in use from 2011 to 2019. And it compounded that error by not telling criminal defendants about its neglect, that it had failed to calibrate these machines. So basically, 27,000 cases were potentially impacted by these revelations. One of them relates to a defendant named Lindsay Hallinan. Back in 2013. She was stopped at a surprising checkpoint near Salem, and with the breathalyzer, she registered a .23 blood alcohol content, which is quite high. And then, based on the advice of her attorney, she pled guilty to operating under the influence. Basically, she was unaware of any problems with the machine. So she pleads guilty. And the question then becomes whether she could challenge that guilty plea.

Siegel: To clarify, what's at issue here is the idea that she pled guilty without knowing that she had a possible claim about the reliability of the breath machine?

Medwed: Exactly. Back in 2013, no one knew about these problems. It wasn't until much later, after extensive litigation in a case called Commonwealth versus Anonymous, that we learned about these problems. So what Hallinan did in 2021 is she filed a motion to withdraw her guilty plea. And her argument was that these revelations about the Office of Alcohol Testing comprised newly discovered evidence, that had she known about these problems, she might have made a different decision about pleading guilty. She might have gone to trial. However, her trial judge was really concerned about this, didn't feel as though he had the authority to make a decision here because of the potential ripple effects on 27,000 cases. So effectively he pointed to the SJC, which is where the case is now.

Alston: So really quickly here, Dan, how do you think the SJC is going to rule on that one?

Medwed: Well, I think the SJC, as in past state crime lab scandals, will maybe embrace what's known as a global remedy, a remedy that would affect everybody here.