We were troubled by a misstatement in a recent SJC opinion which asserted that Massachusetts' art. 26 protection against cruel or unusual punishments had never been ruled to be more protective than the Eighth Amendment. It just isn't true. So, we (along with Attorney Merritt Schnipper) filed this amicus brief on behalf of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, asking the SJC to remove this misstatement. Many of us feared that this was a beachhead in an attempted rollback on constitutional protections.