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Appeals court wrestles with retroactivity question in firearm-licensing challenge
Summary
Counsel for Ricardo Fields asked the Appeals Court to apply Supreme Court and SJC precedents to require the Commonwealth to prove the absence of a firearms license at trial; the panel pressed whether recent SJC guidance limits retroactivity of those rules to convictions final after Bruin.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court considered a Rule 30 appeal over whether a defendant convicted in 2011 can benefit from later changes in Second Amendment doctrine and SJC retroactivity rulings (Commonwealth v. Ricardo Fields, 2024-1307). Counsel for Ricardo Fields argued the Commonwealth was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of a firearms license at Fields's 2011 trial and that McDonald and Heller made that right fundamental.
Attorney Bennion, arguing for Fields, told the panel that trial counsel preserved the issue at trial and stressed that once a constitutional right is treated as…
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