When Massachusetts’s criminal justice system collides with federal immigration actions, the fingers start pointing.
Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court spent most of Monday’s oral arguments trying to work out whether prosecutors have any duty to tell judges if their defendants could be arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and what power, if any, state judges have to order immigration officials to bring a person back into the state so they can face trial.
If it turns into federal versus state “standoff,” as several justices put it, what then?
Lawyers for three men detained by ICE during their Massachusetts criminal prosecutions argue that judges and prosecutors can do more to prevent immigration proceedings from derailing the normal course of justice.
In a case that sparked a political conflagration between the Suffolk County district attorney’s office and federal prosecutors last year, Dominican national Wilson Martell-Lebron was arrested outside the courthouse mid-trial by an immigration agent who had been slated as a prosecution witness. Martell-Lebron was charged with providing false information on a license application.
The judge in the case, Mark Summerville, accused ICE agent Brian Sullivan of violating Martell-Lebron’s rights to due process and a fair trial, and concluded that two state troopers involved in the case and communicating with the ICE agent knew about plans to detain the man. Summerville dismissed the case against Martell-Lebron, ruling there had been egregious prosecutorial misconduct.
The Suffolk County district attorney’s office appealed Summerville’s decision.
Justices on Monday were openly skeptical of claims that prosecutors had no special knowledge that their defendant would be detained, given that the ICE agent who directed the detention was part of the prosecution before the trial.
“I’m not buying your argument that he’s not a member of the prosecution team after the discovery stage,” Justice Frank Gaziano said, referring to the period of time before trial where both sides exchange relevant information.
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Published by MassINC