Latest Case: Commonwealth v. Buono (Criminal Law)

Supreme Court Gives States the Green Light to Infringe Copyrights

MICHAEL C. DORF

Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf comments on a recent decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that Congress lacked constitutional authority to enact the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990, which gives individuals the right to sue a state for damages for copyright infringement. Dorf describes the complexity of the Court’s sovereign immunity doctrine and points out the Court’s peculiar failure to simply invalidate a portion of the statute while severing and preserving the valid portions and/or applications of it—which the Court has done in some other cases.

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Commonwealth v. Buono

Docket: SJC-12811

Opinion Date: March 26, 2020

Judge: Cypher

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Supreme Judicial Court reversed the superior court judge's allowance of Defendant's motion to dismiss three indictments against him for statutory rape and three indictments for forcible rape of a minor for three crimes he allegedly committed against a student in the 1980s, holding that the Commonwealth's evidence established probable cause for only two separate incidents rather than three. At issue in this case were certain provisions of a statute that sets a twenty-seven year statute of limitations on sex crimes against children, a requirement of corroborating evidence if the crimes are charged after the limitation period has expired, and a tolling provision. The Supreme Judicial Court held (1) the tolling provision in Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 277, 63 does not apply to the requirement that child rape charges brought more than twenty-seven years after the commission of the alleged crime be supported by corroborating evidence; (2) the evidentiary requirement of section 63 requires the Commonwealth to present the corroborating evidence to the grand jury; (3) the Commonwealth presented sufficient corroborating evidence to the grand jury in the instant case; and (4) the Commonwealth's evidence established probable cause for only two alleged incidents.