If You Want To Send Him To Jail, You Should Probably Take Some Testimony

This blog has devoted a lot of oxygen to criticizing lawyers who do a poor job for their clients. Sometimes the fault lies in, er, a different direction.

In Commonwealth v. King, Appeals Ct. No. 07-P-397, the District Court sent the defendant back to jail for 18 months for a probation violation. At the hearing the Court took no testimony, instead choosing to rely on a police report. Making this approximately the ten zillionth instance in which a court has misapplied, overlooked, or plain disregarded the hearsay rule.

The Appeals Court took a look at the record and noted that the defendant quite possibly did engage in some bad conduct, but said, in essence, NSFMF.