Commonwealth v. Frith

In the present case, here on a reservation and report by a single justice of this court, we consider whether a judge in the Cambridge Division of the District Court Department (District Court) abused his discretion when he imposed a $5,000 *435sanction on the Commonwealth for violating Mass. R. Crim. R 14 (a) (3), as appearing in 442 Mass. 1518 (2004), by failing to inquire of police as to the existence of discoverable material and then making a false representation on a “certificate of compliance” regarding the satisfaction of its pretrial discovery obligations. For the reasons that follow, we…