{"id":195,"date":"2013-03-24T05:23:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T05:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.massachusettscriminaldefenselawyerblog.com\/2013\/03\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru.html"},"modified":"2013-03-24T05:23:47","modified_gmt":"2013-03-24T05:23:47","slug":"how-does-a-court-prove-constru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Often times, those charged with illegal possession of a firearm in Boston will be arrested when the police officer never saw them in possession of the firearm at all. When a suspect is arrested without actually being in possession of the firearm the prosecution will try to prove constructive possession. <\/p>\n<p>As a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delsignorelaw.com\/\">Boston criminal defense attorney<\/a>, it is important to fight this charge of constructive possession as often times it can be an abuse of police discretion when an officer arrests everybody on the scene where a gun was found. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently answered what the prosecution needs to show to obtain a conviction for constructive possession in <u><a href=\"http:\/\/masscases.com\/cases\/app\/80\/80massappct791.html\">Commonwealth v. Romero<\/a><\/u>. <\/p>\n<p>In <u>Commonwealth v. Romero<\/u>, the defendant was parked in front of a friend&#8217;s house with three other men. The defendant was in the driver&#8217;s seat and he had seen one of the passengers with a gun earlier in the day. A police officer pulled behind the defendant&#8217;s car and observed the vehicle for several moments. It appeared that all four passengers were passing back an object back and forth. When the officer approached the vehicle he observed a gun in one of the passenger&#8217;s laps. The defendant was arrested and charged with possession of a firearm without a license. Since the defendant was not in physical possession of the weapon, the prosecution relied on constructive possession and the defendant was convicted.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Often times, those charged with illegal possession of a firearm in Boston will be arrested when the police officer never saw them in possession of the firearm at all. When a suspect is arrested without actually being in possession of the firearm the prosecution will try to prove constructive possession. As a Boston criminal defense [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gun-offenses"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm &#8212; Massachusetts Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog &#8212; March 24, 2013<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Often times, those charged with illegal possession of a firearm in Boston will be arrested when the police officer never saw them in possession of the &#8212; March 24, 2013\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm &#8212; Massachusetts Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog &#8212; March 24, 2013\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Often times, those charged with illegal possession of a firearm in Boston will be arrested when the police officer never saw them in possession of the &#8212; March 24, 2013\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael DelSignore\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm &#8212; Massachusetts Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog &#8212; March 24, 2013","description":"Often times, those charged with illegal possession of a firearm in Boston will be arrested when the police officer never saw them in possession of the &#8212; March 24, 2013","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm &#8212; Massachusetts Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog &#8212; March 24, 2013","twitter_description":"Often times, those charged with illegal possession of a firearm in Boston will be arrested when the police officer never saw them in possession of the &#8212; March 24, 2013","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Michael DelSignore","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/"},"author":{"name":"Michael DelSignore","@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f0bc58f94b3abb11fcd52cf8961c0a6e"},"headline":"Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm","datePublished":"2013-03-24T05:23:47+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/"},"wordCount":633,"articleSection":["gun offenses"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/","url":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/","name":"Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm &#8212; Massachusetts Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog &#8212; March 24, 2013","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-03-24T05:23:47+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f0bc58f94b3abb11fcd52cf8961c0a6e"},"description":"Often times, those charged with illegal possession of a firearm in Boston will be arrested when the police officer never saw them in possession of the &#8212; March 24, 2013","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/how-does-a-court-prove-constru\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Defining Constructive possession in Massachusetts gun charge, what does it mean to possess a firearm"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/","name":"Massachusetts Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog","description":"Published by Massachusetts Criminal Defense Attorney \u2014 Michael DelSignore","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f0bc58f94b3abb11fcd52cf8961c0a6e","name":"Michael DelSignore","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2c2feb8b4aa63cb661df76a3a12db20d4c03eb82a70a095b3d26cfac38d5dc0b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2c2feb8b4aa63cb661df76a3a12db20d4c03eb82a70a095b3d26cfac38d5dc0b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2c2feb8b4aa63cb661df76a3a12db20d4c03eb82a70a095b3d26cfac38d5dc0b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Michael DelSignore"}}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delsignoredefense.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}