Commonwealth v. Murungu

In Commonwealth v. King, 445 Mass. 217 (2005), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 1216 (2006), we modified our “fresh complaint” doctrine to one of “first complaint.” We, and many other courts in the United States, had adopted the fresh complaint doctrine because of the belief that failure of a rape victim to make a prompt complaint of a sexual assault was similar to an inconsistent statement that contrasted with the complainant’s trial testimony about the rape. Id. at 229, citing Commonwealth v. Lavalley, 410 Mass. 641, 646-647 n.7 (1991). Consequently, this fresh complaint doctrine permitted the…