Commonwealth v. Freeman
Annotate this CaseDefendants were indicted on charges of unarmed robbery and assault and battery. Defendants both committed the offenses prior to their eighteenth birthdays. The Governor subsequently signed an “Act expanding juvenile jurisdiction” that extended the jurisdiction of the juvenile court to children who are seventeen years of age at the time of committing an offense. Defendants filed motions to dismiss, arguing that the Act should be applied retroactively to seventeen-year-old defendants who had criminal charges pending against them as of the Act’s effective date and that a failure to apply the Act retroactively as to such defendants would violate their equal protection rights. The Supreme Judicial Court held (1) the Act does not apply retroactively to a defendant who commits an offense prior to his eighteenth birthday for which a criminal proceeding commenced prior to the effective date of the Act; and (2) prospective application of the Act does not violate the equal protection guarantees provided by the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution and article 1 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, as amended by article 106 of the Amendments.
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