BOSTON — A federal judge has ruled that a Massachusetts law banning secret audio recordings of police or government officials is unconstitutional.
Chief United State District Judge Patti Saris ruled Monday secret audio recordings of officials performing their duties in public is protected by the First Amendment.
The judge made the ruling on two cases, one involving residents who frequently record police and another brought by the conservative activist group Project Veritas.
Court records show neither defendant had conducted secret recordings of police, but they feared recording openly would “endanger their safety” and “provoke hostility.”
FALL RIVER — Prosecutors in Massachusetts say a Taunton man who shot another man at a cookout in 2015 has been sentenced to more than 18 years in prison.
Lorenze DaVeiga pleaded guilty Monday in Fall River Superior Court to multiple charges including manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm.
Prosecutors say the 22-year-old DaVeiga killed Marques McCassie in a shootout at a cookout at McCassie’s cousin’s home in Taunton in June 2015.
According to the DA’s office, evidence showed McCassie was also armed and fired at DaVeiga, hitting him four times.
Both were transported to different hospitals, and McCassie later died at a hospital in Taunton while DaVeiga underwent life-saving surgery.
SALEM — A college student has been charged with having a gun and about 100 rounds of ammunition in his dorm room.
Police say 22-year-old Salem State University student Gabe Bergeron turned himself in at court Monday after learning campus police had charged him with carrying a dangerous weapon on school grounds.
Prosecutors say police investigators determined Bergeron had been showing a student how to alter the handgun to hinder law enforcement efforts to link the gun to fired bullets.
Police say they found two loaded clips, ammunition and a knife, 12 ounces of marijuana and about nine stimulant pills.
BOSTON — A U.S. Army Air Forces pilot from Brookline whose plane crashed during World War II has been accounted for.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Tuesday that 1st Lt. Allen R. Turner was accounted for in September.
The 25-year-old Turner was the pilot of a C-109 aircraft on July 17, 1945, flying from India to China over what airmen called “The Hump,” an area of the eastern Himalayas.
The plane crashed in a remote area and after an extensive search all four people on the aircraft were declared dead.
The wreckage was found by an investigator in 2007, and in 2009 an area resident turned over bone fragments he found at the site.
From Associated Press