A Divisão de Apelação

A highly qualified and experienced team of Assistant District Attorneys is assigned to the Appeals Unit. These prosecutors not only represent the Commonwealth before the state’s appellate courts, but they also work hand in hand with the trial prosecutors on a daily basis to assist with legal questions that arise during the course of a prosecution.

Every defendant has the right to appeal a conviction. When convicted defendants appeal their convictions and/or sentences, the Appeals Unit responds to their claims and presents the Commonwealth’s arguments to the Massachusetts Appeals Court or to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The Appeals Unit also responds to post-conviction motions brought in the Superior Court. Occasionally, the District Attorney may appeal from a judicial ruling on a pretrial motion, such as the suppression of evidence or the dismissal of a case. However, the District Attorney cannot appeal when a defendant has been found not guilty after trial. 

The Appeals Unit also conducts monthly office-wide trainings on various legal topics geared towards honing the advocacy skills of the attorneys and ensuring that they are regularly apprised of changes in the law. Additionally, the Unit hosts training programs for law enforcement in the county addressing the challenges that patrol officers and detectives face in particular types of investigations, including narcotics, sexual assault, and domestic violence. Recent sessions have featured instruction on drafting and executing search warrants as well as the legal principles involved in interrogating a suspect. 

The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office is dedicated to ensuring the integrity of the convictions obtained by our prosecutors. Our office embraces the greater ethical duties of a prosecutor as the representative of the people. We recognize that we have a broader and deeper duty to seek justice, including remedying injustices where they may occur. Our “interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that [we] shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, [the prosecutor] is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.” Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935).

The criminal justice system sets a high bar for conviction: a trial before a jury of members of the community at which the prosecutor must establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt based on reliable and credible evidence. Nonetheless, like all human undertakings and institutions, errors occasionally occur that call for extraordinary relief. Whether appeals or post-conviction motions are based on newly discovered evidence, such as cutting-edge DNA testing on old cases, or mistaken identifications – or even mistakes by the court, civilian witnesses, forensic experts, defense counsel, prosecutors, or the police – all are afforded careful review by the Appeals Unit.