# Commonwealth v. Payne

> Massachusetts Appeals Court · November 10, 1992 · 33 Mass. App. Ct. 553

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9735468

## Case

- **Full name:** Commonwealth vs. Richard Payne
- **Court:** Massachusetts Appeals Court
- **Decided:** November 10, 1992
- **Citations:** 33 Mass. App. Ct. 553; 602 N.E.2d 594; 1992 Mass. App. LEXIS 871
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Brown
- **Judges:** Brown, Kass, Ireland
- **Cited by:** 4 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/9735468

## Opinion text

*558 Brown, J.
(concurring). The short answer to the defendant’s contention here is that “a deal is a deal.” The Commonwealth maintained that the defendant stole in excess of $300,000 of the public’s money. The defendant agreed to give back $40,000. That was the deal and, considering the alternative, i.e., a sentence to State prison, it was a very good deal for the defendant.
I agree wholeheartedly with the views expressed by the second Superior Court judge, that when professionals such as lawyers, accountants, and physicians engage in criminal offenses of this sort, they ought to suffer some incarceration. Jails should not be populated only by poor people. We now can see clearly that “[a] pen in the hand of a defrauding provider of services to the public [is] as dangerous and damaging to society as a gun in the hand of a robber.” Commonwealth v. Leavitt, 17 Mass. App. Ct. 585, 597 (1984) (Brown, J., concurring). As we said in the Leavitt case, if people commit those kinds of crimes, they must be prepared to do some jail time. In the vernacular, they ought to hear steel “clank behind them.”

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9735468. Public record. Not legal advice.