We’re excited to announce that Wood & Nathanson partner Eva Jellison has been named to Massachusetts Lawyer’s Weekly Excellence in the Law Up & Coming Lawyers 2020. Attorney Jellison’s relentless work on behalf of criminal justice-involved juveniles and adults produced results numerous times over the past year alone, including wins retroactively abolishing the offense of disturbing a school, reducing a “habitual offender” client's sentence by ten years, and retroactively abolishing the prosecution of eleven year-old children. We can’t wait to see what she’ll accomplish in 2020!
Disturbing a School Abolished Retroactively
On October 29, 2019, Attorney Jellison convinced the Supreme Judicial Court to give retroactive effect to the legislature’s abolition of the offense of “disturbing a school,” including cases that were filed and pending at the time the legislature repealed the offense. Building on Attorney Jellison’s successful advocacy in Lazlo L. v. Commonwealth, the Court held in Commonwealth v. Ashe A. that allowing those cases to still be prosecuted would be “repugnant” to the legislature’s purpose of juvenile justice reform. This offense was a major driver of the school to prison pipeline. Society needs to stop criminalizing children for behaving like children.