Mike Tartaglia (’15) Helps Secure Criminal Clinic Victory in Search-and-Seizure Case
Tartaglia built on the work of two former clinic students to ensure justice for their client.
BU Law’s Criminal Law Clinic recently won an important victory in the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Capping off work done by former clinical students Jessica Dahan (’13) and Sesi Garimella (’14), current student Mike Tartaglia (’15) wrote and filed important documents that helped bring about the favorable outcome.
Under the supervision of Professor Karen Pita Loor, the clinic has been handling this Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure case since 2012, when, during a drug investigation, undercover police engaged in a drug buy. Police then proceeded to stop individuals in the area, including a woman who had engaged in a brief discussion with a second individual who had interacted with a suspected drug seller. Boston police officers followed this young woman into a fast food restaurant and removed her from the main restaurant into a small foyer area. The woman protested the seizure and following a verbal confrontation, police officers conducted a search and arrested the woman.
The clinic students challenged the police’s actions, both the search and seizure, arguing at the trial and appellate level that their behavior violated this young woman’s constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable government searches and seizures. Specifically, students argued that police had no probable cause to arrest or search their client, and that any evidence recovered during the search should therefore be suppressed pursuant to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and thus excluded from trial.
After an unsuccessful motion to suppress evidence, Dahan wrote a petition for interlocutory review, which the Massachusetts Appeals Court, in a rare move, granted. Garimella then wrote the appellate brief, containing the substance of the argument in the case: that police had neither reasonable suspicion to approach, nor probable cause to arrest, the client. After the Commonwealth filed its reply brief, Tartaglia was tasked with writing the response, the last volley before the case would be argued in May 2014.
“My focus in the response was on an argument that the Commonwealth raised in the end of its reply,” says Tartaglia. “They claimed that police could have arrested our client for disorderly conduct because she yelled at police as they were arresting her. So I worked to argue against that because if police could have arrested her for disorderly conduct, that would have justified the search, and we would have lost our case.”
Over the course of a month, Tartaglia conducted extensive legal research and, with Professor Loor’s supervision, went through multiple revisions to his drafts of the brief. He wound up with a 20-page argument responsive to the government’s last-ditch argument that the clinic client could have been arrested on alternative grounds due to her protests.
The next step for the clinic was to argue the appeal before the Massachusetts Appeals Court, a rare, high-stakes opportunity that Garimella took on last spring. In the weeks leading up to the argument, Professor Loor organized several mock arguments where faculty, school alums, local appellate attorneys, and students helped Garimella prepare. Tartaglia served as a “judge” on several, asking questions intended to address weak spots in the argument. Following a stellar argument by Garimella, the students’ efforts paid off when the Appeals Court ruled in the client’s favor on all grounds.
After the clinic’s win at the Appeals Court, the Commonwealth appealed, this time to the Supreme Judicial Court, and Tartaglia once again responded. He wrote a motion urging the SJC to deny the appeal, both because the Appeals Court was correct as a matter of law, and because the client was suffering by having her case dragged out for so long. The SJC denied the appeal, ensuring a complete victory for the clinic’s client.
“Our client was really grateful for our work through the trial and appeals court, and it just felt great to be able to prevail for her,” says Tartaglia. “It also felt good for me personally to have succeeded on the argument in the brief and the motion against the continued appeal. Those were two of the first real victories of my legal career.”
Aside from the win, Tartaglia also enjoyed the challenges presented by the complicated nature of the case. “At first blush it seemed that there was a clear violation of our client’s Fourth Amendment rights when police arrested her, but there were a few cases that seemed to go against us. The challenge really became figuring out the precise way to distinguish our case from others that were similar.”
Before enrolling in the Criminal Law Clinic, Tartaglia participated in a 1L service trip to Kansas City, where he worked on habeas corpus claims for prisoners sentenced to death. “It was an enlightening and very rewarding experience, and it gave me an entirely new appreciation for the dedication attorneys must have to work on such difficult cases.”
During his second year, Tartaglia particularly enjoyed his Criminal Procedure course, which focused mainly on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights. “The professor was demanding and slightly terrifying, but he inspired me to do some of my best work and to really push myself to excel,” he recalls. “I loved that material and learned more in that class than in maybe any other class I’ve taken.”
Last summer, Tartaglia worked at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, a public defense office that serves indigent men and women charged with felonies in DC. He worked primarily with an attorney in the trial division, researching and writing in preparation for three trials he was involved in. Much of his work concerned suppression of evidence for Fourth Amendment violations, the central issue in the recent clinic victory. See Mike talk about his summer experience here.
After graduation, Tartaglia hopes to continue to work in criminal justice, ideally as a public defender. He feels that the training he received in the clinic, and on this particular case, will be invaluable throughout his legal career. “I became much more familiar with court processes and more comfortable working with clients one-on-one,” he says. “I also learned how to better pace myself when working on difficult cases, and some creative ways to solve problems in investigating and litigating criminal cases.”