Supreme Judicial Court hears arguments in Commonwealth v. Jisung Crowder over licensure element and stop‑and‑frisk

The Supreme Judicial Court heard oral argument in Commonwealth v. Jisung Crowder on whether the Commonwealth was required to prove the absence of a license after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Bruen and whether a pat frisk and subsequent seizure at a traffic stop were lawful.

Why it matters: The justices were asked to decide whether a change in federal Second Amendment jurisprudence altered what prosecutors must prove in Massachusetts prosecutions for carrying a firearm outside the home and whether evidence from a traffic stop should have been suppressed because officers lacked reasonable suspicion to frisk the defendant.

Defense counsel Hannah Taylor, arguing for Dasanu Crowder, told the court she would focus “on 2 primary issues,” first whether the trial instruction and evidence deficiencies require reversal on the licensure element and, if time permitted, the denial of the motion to suppress. Taylor said the defense was raising both an instructional‑error claim and an insufficiency‑of‑the‑evidence claim and argued the two are “related but distinct.” She contended that Bruen and later state decisions put the Commonwealth on notice that lack of licensure was an essential element and that the Commonwealth at trial…