Court Opinion

ID: 9745563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 23:09:59.270879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:02.569801
License: Public Domain

Liacos, J.
(concurring). I join the court in its reasoning and in the conclusion that the judgment should be affirmed. One aspect of the court’s treatment of the selection of Essex County grand juries requires, however, some comment.
The court holds that the defendant did not meet the requirements of Mass. R. Crim. P. 13 (a) (2), 378 Mass. 871 (1979), so as to preserve the issue for appeal. I agree. I note that, in addition to the authorities cited by the court, we said in Commonwealth v. Aponte, 391 Mass. 494, 510 n.23 (1984), that “[t]he principle we announce today . . . will be open on direct appeal only to such defendants who properly have raised . . . similar claims by a pretrial motion to dismiss” (emphasis supplied). This defendant, as the court points out, did not meet that requirement.
On the other hand, the court’s statement that it is “not inclined to assume that the response to our December, 1980, recommendations for Statewide changes in annual jury selection procedures [in Commonwealth v. Bastarache, 382 Mass. 86, 103 (1980)] was total inaction” (supra at 169-170) is unduly optimistic. This is so for two reasons. Bastarache was decided on December 12, 1980, and yet, as Commonwealth v. Aponte, supra at 497, reveals, discriminatory selection procedures were *173still being utilized in Essex County through 1981. Thus, it seems to me more appropriate “to assume” that the situation that persisted in Essex County in the years 1976-1981 (Aponte, supra at 497, 499-501) continued to exist until the advent of the “one day or one trial” system in that county on January 1, 1984. It is well recognized that there is an inference that a state of things proved to exist continues to exist until there is evidence to the contrary. Conroy v. Fall River Herald News Publishing Co., 306 Mass. 488, 493 (1940). Galdston v. McCarthy, 302 Mass. 36, 37 (1938). In this context, it seems to me to be a more appropriate assumption that the same state of affairs existed in Essex County when Judge Hallisey filed his extensive and carefully worked out findings and rulings on July 19, 1982, and until we affirmed those rulings in 1984 in Aponte. Indeed, the list of grand jurors who indicted the defendant on October 19,1983, filed by the defendant with his motion, tends to corroborate this inference since it reveals not one surname cognizable as remotely Hispanic in nature.
Even though we did not issue our opinion in Aponte until March 19, 1984, Judge Hallisey’s orders in Aponte were the law of Essex County pending our decision. In this context, I find it hard to understand how the judge in this case was allowed to proceed without the record revealing whether he was advised by either the prosecutor or the defense counsel of Judge Hallisey’s decision, and whether or not the problem of discriminatory jury selection had been resolved by the time this defendant was indicted. In my view, both counsel had a duty so to advise the judge in their role as officers of the court.