On behalf of MACDL, Attorney Wood and a team of attorneys from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr recently filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Judicial Court to fully enforce people’s rights not to be targeted for stops based on their race, regardless of whether the police have reasonable suspicion. The Commonwealth has repeatedly argued that if the police have reasonable suspicion, then it does not matter whether someone has been targeted because of their race. This argument is pernicious, essentially reading the equal protection clause out of the constitution. The SJC must reject such arguments.
Racial Justice Litigation
Every attorney at Wood & Nathanson is motivated to advance racial justice. It is a central focus of what we do. We thought we would take a moment to outline some of our work in this area. We have brought litigation challenging racism in traffic stops, stop and frisk, jury selection and the school to prison pipeline. Racism pervades the criminal justice system and we will not stop challenging it.
The Road to Commonwealth v. Long
Following up on our recent post, Attorney Wood recently wrote a longer piece describing the litigation the led to the SJC’s recent decision in Commonwealth v. Long, which lessened the burden for defendants moving to suppress due to racial profiling or “Driving While Black.” You can read the full article at the MACDL website here.
Landmark Ruling Against Racial Profiling
MACDL, whose amicus committee is co-chaired by Attorney Wood, released a statement on September 17, 2020 lauding the SJC’s decision in Commonwealth v. Long, adopting much of a MACDL argument, that was a major step forward for racial justice on the roadways of Massachusetts. The MACDL amicus committee formed a coalition with NEIP, LCR and CHHIRJ that filed an amicus brief urging the Court to prohibit racial profiling in traffic stops. amicus arguing that the Lora equal protection standard for demonstrating that automobile stops are motivated by race was unworkable and should be replaced with a "but for" test - essentially banning pretextual stops. The Court unanimously adopted the MACDL view that the Lora test is unworkable and replaced it with a more flexible totality of the circumstances test in which the question is whether the totality of the circumstances demonstrate that the officers' decision to stop the defendant was motivated by race. Moreover, two members of the Court (Lenk & Budd) agreed with MACDL that the better solution is to ban pretextual stops altogether. The attorneys at Wood & Nathanson have been focused on changing the law regarding racial profiling for years. In Long, Attorney Wood helped put together the MACDL team that drafted its powerful amicus brief. And prior to Long, Attorney Malm was counsel in Commonwealth v. Buckley, which appears to have convinced the SJC to take the problem of pretextual stops more seriously. [click to read full post]