# Commonwealth v. Hart

> Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · October 20, 2009 · 455 Mass. 230

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6454202

## Case

- **Full name:** Commonwealth v. Michael Hart
- **Court:** Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
- **Decided:** October 20, 2009
- **Citations:** 455 Mass. 230; 914 N.E.2d 904; 2009 Mass. LEXIS 663
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Marshall
- **Judges:** Gants, Marshall
- **Cited by:** 31 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6454202

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- affirming trial court’s admission of impeachment evidence regarding a witness’s pretrial silence and distinguishing that evidence from inadmissible impeachment evidence of a defendant’s pretrial silence

## Opinion text

Marshall, C.J.
(concurring, with whom Botsford, J., joins). I fully agree with the court’s analysis on the first issue, concerning the prosecutor’s impeachment of the defendant’s alibi witnesses. With respect to the second issue, the admission in evidence of the recorded jailhouse telephone conversations between the defendant and his sister, I disagree, for the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Matter of a Grand Jury Subpoena, 454 Mass. 685, 693-705 (2009) (Marshall, C.J., dissenting), with the court’s conclusion that no constitutionally protected privacy rights of the defendant are implicated. I agree with the court’s conclusion, however, in its penultimate paragraph, that the admission of the recordings was harmless in the circumstances of this case.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6454202. Public record. Not legal advice.