Commonwealth v. Nurse

While in the custody of police on a charge of prostitution, Tracy Jones1 complained of a rape that had occurred close to three months (more precisely, eighty-three days) earlier. The police detective to whom she confided the details of that sexual assault was permitted, over objection, to testify in full detail before a jury in Superior Court about what Jones had told him. The defendant was convicted of rape. We conclude that, in the circumstances, Jones’s complaint to the detective was not reasonably prompt, and that the detective’s account of his *37conversation with her should not have been…