June 17, 2013

• Steven Topazio wrote this May 5, 2014 at 3:11 am

The client, a 43 year old female cab driver, was arrested outside of Boston Logan Airport for allegedly head-butting a Massport employee. In the police report, the Massport employee stated that she approached the client’s cab and asked her to move the vehicle forward because she was obstructing buses from discharging passengers. The report then stated that the client refused and exited her vehicle and continuously yelled at the Massport employee then head-butted her before leaving. The client left the scene and was later summonsed to East Boston District Court and after a Magistrate hearing, a complaint for Assault and Battery was issued. The client then hired Boston Criminal Attorney Steven J. Topazio to defend her. The client denied any physical contact with the alleged victim. Realizing the event must have been captured on surveillance video, Attorney Topazio demanded copies of all video surveillance footage at Logan where the incident allegedly occurred. When the videos were not produced, Attorney Topazio filed a motion for authorization to subpoena complete security surveillance videos from Massport which the court allowed. Attorney Topazio discovered that the terminal where the alleged incident occurred has 8 surveillance cameras. The State Police, however, only produced one camera angle and failed to provide complete videos of all camera angles relating to this matter as ordered by the court. Not satisfied with only one video angle, Attorney Topazio filed a motion to compel discovery of the other camera angles and learned that the other camera angles were viewed by the State Police, and after viewing the videos and determining their probative value to the case without allowing Attorney Topazio to view the evidence, destroyed the footage. Attorney Topazio believed that exculpatory evidence was destroyed and filed a motion to dismiss the case due to egregious police misconduct and the loss of evidence. Attorney Topazio argued that prosecutorial misconduct includes not only lack of disclosure by the prosecutor but also inept and bungling performance of the police, which is attributed to the prosecutors, and that the prosecutor should be held responsible for the police loss of evidence. Today, the judge agreed with Attorney Topazio and allowed his motion to dismiss the case on the grounds of loss of potentially exculpatory evidence.