Immigration & Criminal Defense Blog

Atty Lown provides testimony for Nat’l Lawyers Guild in support of “de-carceration” Bill

Jails and prisons in Mass. remain filled with hundreds of individuals who can’t afford bail or are nearing their wrap dates. Yet they...

Lown Law Firm

May 6, 20202 min read

38 views

0 comments

Stop And Frisk did not reduce crime

With crime already falling,"Broken Windows Policing" was rolled out with great fanfare and a new guise of academic security-think....

Lown Law Firm

Feb 16, 20206 min read

87 views

0 comments

Lown beats back false accusations at restraining order hearing in Chelsea District Court

Attorney Lown recently prevailed at a restraining order hearing in Chelsea District Court. The plaintiff had accused Lown’s client of...

Lown Law Firm

Jan 5, 20201 min read

52 views

0 comments

Other lawyers give Attorney Lown top ranking

Attorney Lown received a top ranking from other lawyers, according to the website Martindale which lists lawyers and provides for a peer...

Lown Law Firm

Dec 4, 20191 min read

41 views

0 comments

Fifth "Not Guilty" in a row

By a Lown Law Firm client and friend: "I had Zachary Lown as my criminal defense attorney on a domestic case. This was in Boston....

Lown Law Firm

Oct 3, 20191 min read

9 views

0 comments

Lown defeats wrongful restraining order in Lynn District Court

After an extraordinary hearing that lasted over 4 hours, Attorney Lown prevailed on behalf of his client in the Lynn District Court. The...

Lown Law Firm

Sep 9, 20191 min read

17 views

0 comments

Attorney Lown wins Green Card for young couple

The green card processing time on this case was unusually fast. The spouse initially came here to study. She later fell in love with a...

Lown Law Firm

Aug 11, 20191 min read

45 views

0 comments

Suppression victory limits police intrusion

Attorney Lown’s motion to suppress win in Boston’s downtown district court underscored an important fact: police officers do not have...

Lown Law Firm

Jul 2, 20191 min read

50 views

0 comments

Attorney Lown convinces DA to drop “reckless driving” charge

Ultimately, Attorney Lown prevailed and was able to show the DA that this was an accident, not a crime.

Lown Law Firm

May 31, 20191 min read

26 views

0 comments

DA Still Prosecuting Crimes She Pledged to Drop

The District Attorney for Suffolk County, which includes Boston, is still prosecuting petty crimes that she pledged to drop. District...

Lown Law Firm

Feb 23, 20191 min read

24 views

0 comments

Attorney Lown wins Clerk Magistrate hearing

The victory was achieved through Attorney Lown’s cross-examination of the accuser and a brief argument to the Clerk Magistrate. The...

Lown Law Firm

Feb 5, 20191 min read

47 views

0 comments

Lown wins ‘Not Guilty’ for client in mis-identification case

Attorney Lown won a “not guilty” jury verdict for his client who was mis-identified as the man who threatened two women with a gun....

Lown Law Firm

Nov 5, 20181 min read

57 views

0 comments

Will Rachael Rollins back down?

Rachael Rollins is already feeling the pressure to back off her reform agenda. She doesn't seem like the type to easily back down. Just...

Lown Law Firm

Sep 17, 20181 min read

46 views

0 comments

Thousands of OUI Breath Tests to be Thrown Out, Again

Breath tests in OUI cases are set to be excluded for 2011 to at least 2017. It appears prosecutors are not using breathalyzer results in...

Lown Law Firm

Aug 26, 20182 min read

43 views

0 comments

Quick Not Guilty Verdict for OUI Client

August 9, 2018 - A Dorchester jury deliberated today for barely 10 minutes before coming back "Not Guilty" for Attorney Lown's...

Lown Law Firm

Aug 13, 20181 min read

59 views

0 comments

What We Did In Vietnam

We are now fifty years since American soldiers massacred nearly 500 unarmed women, children and old men at Mai Lai in Vietnam, and yet,...

Lown Law Firm

Jun 12, 20182 min read

65 views

0 comments

Lown wins 'Not Guilty' after Cops harass, then wrongly accuse young man

A Boston Police officer chased a young man out of a building where he was visiting his friends, slammed this young man on the ground,...

Lown Law Firm

Oct 20, 20171 min read

3 views

0 comments

Lown Law Firm on INSTAGRAM

Contact

🎊💥➡️ “Zachary Lown is a top-rated attorney who practices law in Boston, Massachusetts. Zachary Lown focuses on Criminal Defense, Personal Injury and Civil Rights.”

“Zachary Lown received Rising Stars designation for 2020 - 2023. He was selected for this honor subsequent to undergoing an evaluation of many different factors including peer recognition and professional achievement.”

➡️Dr. Cervantes’s patient, Hilda, suffered from kidney disease but because she lacked legal immigration status she was denied lifesaving dialysis treatment. Each week Hilda was admitted to the ER on the brink of death. Each week, her sons wondered if their mom would survive to the following weekend. Hilda finally decided to find adoptive parents for her boys so that they wouldn’t live in constant distress, and she stopped emergency dialysis. Ten years ago, Hilda died on Mother’s Day.

➡️Hilda’s doctor, Lila Cervantes, knew she faced a choice. “I didn’t know if I could change policy,” she stated, “but I knew I had to try.” Her campaign to provide Medicaid coverage to undocumented immigrants twice almost got her fired and nearly cost her career.

➡️Still, Dr. Cervantes pioneered groundbreaking research and later moved both Democrats and Republicans in her home state of Colorado to approve Medicaid coverage for kidney disease to undocumented persons. She built a cadre of doctors, developed talking points for both sides of the aisle, and as of today, has won passage of similar legislation in 20 states. Dr. Lila Cervantes is this year’s recipient of the prestigious Bernard Lown Award for Social Responsibility. 💥✊🏅

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS, OTHER EVIDENCE PROVES RACIAL PROFILING: CASE DISMISSED.

➡️ A young man who was Black and had no prior record purchased a gun which he kept on him for safety. He never applied for a “license to carry.” Sometime later, a police officer followed him down Canton’s main commercial throughway, eventually pulling him over just as he arrived at his girlfriend’s job to pick her up from work. The officer later claimed that the reason for the stop was “following too close” to the car in front of him. The officer detained Attorney Lown’s client and recovered a gun from his jacket pocket.

➡️ Lown’s statistical expert analyzed every traffic stop completed by this officer in the previous 4 years. Relying on US census data as well as direct observation of motorists in three different parts of town, the statistician accounted for nearly every possible variation regarding the racial mix of drivers on that Canton street on any given day. He ran 10,000 simulations using different racial variations which accounted for Canton’s demographics, that of its surrounding towns, the towns’ relative population size, the likely number of drivers vs. non-drivers, and the likelihood regarding each town’s contribution to the driving population of Canton. (Looking only at census data, Canton’s population is 9.8% Black while 29.5% of the arresting officer’s stops were of Black drivers).

➡️ Ultimately, this data showed that the percentage of Black drivers whom this officer stopped far exceeded every possible, fair representation of Canton’s Black driving population on any given day. In other words: race played a factor. After Attorney Lown provided this devastating evidence the prosecutor’s office voluntarily dismissed the case. ⚖️💪💥

TWO CASES DROPPED AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SURVIVORS

In two separate cases involving different women, an abusive boyfriend stashed his gun in his girlfriend’s car just prior to getting stopped by the police. There was little evidence that either woman had ever handled much less owned a gun, yet the Suffolk County DA’s office charged both with helping the boyfriend to transport an illegal firearm. ➡️ Both were mothers and the charges carried mandatory jail time and, as a potential consequence, forced removal from their children. ➡️ Lown hired a “battered women’s expert” to explain why a person conditioned to abuse is more likely to succumb to pressure.

➡️ The first case took three years and a mis-trial before the DA finally agreed to drop the case. The second case took two years of litigation, court dates and moral pressure but ultimately the DAs office agreed to drop the charges. Both women suffered greatly under the constant threat of prosecution.

“I want to thank the Suffolk County DA’s office and especially two of the prosecutors who worked on this for keeping an open mind and for ultimately deciding to do the right thing,” Lown said.

DIGITAL RE-CREATION EXONERATES LOWN’S CLIENT

Four Boston police officers identified Attorney Lown’s client “Brian” as an armed robber based on surveillance video. One identifying officer claimed to have known Brian for 20 years. ➡️ At the time Brian was 42 years old, had no criminal convictions and worked at a Boston housing development’s community center with at-risk youth. ➡️ Because police officers observed Brian interacting with youth who the police alleged were gang members the police used these “documented associations” to label Brian as a gang member himself and entered him in their permanent “Gang Database.”

Attorney Lown and his investigators not only defended Brian in court, they accumulated enough evidence to prove who the real suspect was. Finally, by subpoenaing the surveillance videos and dressing Brian as the robbery suspect, Lown’s team was able to reenact the robbery, a digital recreation which revealed obvious physical differences between Brian and the robber. ➡️➡️ One year later, the DA’s office agreed to drop the case. 💪👏

➡️Dr. Altaf Saadi’s family escaped the Saddam Hussein government, migrated to Iran, and eventually to the US. ➡️Moved by her own personal experience, as a neurologist in Boston she now leads Mass General’s asylum clinic. Her work has led to dozens of asylum cases being granted. She later debunked the junk science behind a phony diagnosis called “excited delirium” which police officers had used to describe the people they arrested so as to justify deadly force. To name but a few of her accomplishments….💪💪💪

Said Dr. Saadi: “When I tell people about the work that I do, a common reaction is, ‘Wow, that’s so depressing,’ or ‘Wow, that’s so hard…’ In fact, it is inspiring. It infuses me with purpose. How could I not be inspired by the resiliency of the individuals I serve?”

🎉👏Congratulations to Dr. Altaf Saadi for receiving this year’s Bernard Lown Award for Social Responsibility, 2023!🎊👏

Attorney Lown won a not guilty verdict - his sixth straight - after a trial before a judge on a DUI case in Framingham.

➡️➡️Lown’s client was almost 70 years old and was in his own driveway and walking into his home when a police officer stopped him at his front door. The officer stated that someone had called to complain about his driving. The officer then had this elderly individual do a series of balancing exercises, held him to unfair expectations and arrested him for DUI. On cross examination, the officer was exposed for failing to verify the client’s medical conditions, including the fact that he was wearing a back brace, and for disregarding all of the evidence which showed that an arrest was unjustified. The complete acquittal meant that the client could get his license and his life back. ⚖️

Attorney Lown argued his client’s case before the full Pardon Board whose members voted unanimously to grant the request. It was then sent to Governor Baker who gave it his approval and soon after it was ratified by the Governor’s Council. ⚖️

➡️ Attorney Lown’s client, now 60, was arrested when he was 21 for stealing a spare tire after the car he was riding in got a flat. He accepted responsibility, pled guilty and paid restitution. He went on to raise two children as a single dad, even selling his motorcycle at a young age to fund his daughter’s private school education, and he later went on to become an electrical engineer for a defense contractor. Yet the conviction from when he was a young man still haunted him. It resulted in the state refusing to renew his gun license after a restrictive law change in 2015, and it blocked him from getting security clearance so as to rise in his company, secure a higher position and better pay. A single youthful mistake should not have this type of impact.

➡️ Over the past 25 years, Massachusetts governors have pardoned a total of just 5 people. Pressure had built recently to increase the exercise of this “extraordinary power” with the Mass Bar Association issuing a report decrying the Pardon Board’s backlog and delays in hearing petitions. Mass ranks at the bottom of the list of states to utilize this power to forgive. We need more pardons. At least for this client, life can start anew.

Dr. Mona blew the whistle on Flint’s lead-water crisis, withstood ridicule and government pressure, and forced the Governor to admit that its residents - and especially its children - were being poisoned. ➡️ As a pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha saw elevated blood-lead levels in her young patients. Without access to wider data she used her own patient’s medical records to confirm the danger. ➡️ She forced the State to switch water systems, repair its rusting pipelines, and screen children for learning disabilities, - programs which continue to this day. ➡️➡️➡️ We are still waiting on broader accountability for those responsible. ⚖️ Dr. Mona was rightly selected as the winner of the Dr. Bernard Lown Award For Social Responsibility.🏆🏅🏵

Time to celebrate. This was from an LLF client and friend.

Zachary Lown went above and beyond any expectations I could have had for legal representation. This having been my first time going through the legal process I was unsure of what to expect, but he made sure to adequately prepare me for what was to come and kept me informed every step of the way. Zach is an incredibly knowledgeable and competent attorney who committed themselves 100% to my case. As a result, all of my charges were dismissed. I could not have been more satisfied with how he handled my case from beginning to end. Zach is a consummate professional who I would recommend to anyone going through a hard time. He is a great attorney and above all a great person.

| Lown wins compassionate release for dying client | ➡️➡️➡️ It took six months of litigation and a lawsuit. A few months ago the Commissioner of Correction finally agreed to release Lown’s client on medical parole. This client has stomach cancer and was given less than a year to live. Around 10 percent of these requests have been allowed since the medical parole statute was enacted in 2018. “We are very sad but also extremely relieved that he will be able to die with his family,” Lown said.

Another one 👉 “Attorney Lown is A Great Lawyer, He Has Helped My Family Through A Case That Seemed Tough But He Was Determined And Never Gave Up and Made Sure to Prove My Family Member’s Innocence And The Case Was Dismissed”🙏🙌

Attorney Lown selected to Super Lawyers "Rising Stars." — According to Super Lawyers, this is a recognition awarded to 2.5% of attorneys in Mass.

Thank you to my friends, colleagues and comrades for your support, and to everyone working for social justice. Thank you @ariellewiton for creating this collage which I’ve reposted. We love you all.

😂😂💪💪 #criminaldefenseattorney #criminaldefense

🗣🗣Testifying to the City Council to support City Councilors @ricardonarroyo and @campbelldistrict4 Andrea Campbell’s ordinance to restrict Boston police officers’ use of chemical weapons against the people of Boston ➡️🚨(1) These chemical weapons have been banned from use in warfare under the Geneva Convention of 1925 but are used against Bostonians 🚨(2) Chemical weapon irritants are indiscriminate by nature 🚨(3) These weapons can cause injuries to lungs, burning of skin, excessive vomiting, exacerbation of pre-existing heart and lung disease 🚨(4) Disturbing effects have been shown on women such as inducement of menstruation 🚨(5) The proposed ordinance is not a complete ban but does impose reasonable and necessary restrictions. ⇉ call 📞or email 📩your City Councilor (google “find my Councilor”)

“What this proves is that there’s a lot of fat on the system. There are a ton of resources that could be reinvested,” said Lown. “It’s a question of political will.” ➡️ 🔗link in bio

BAIL SHOULD NOT BE A TOOL TO KEEP DEFENDANTS BEHIND BARS

BOSTON GLOBE, Letter to the Editor, August 13, 2020:
.
.
.
The outrage displayed in reporting on the Massachusetts Bail Fund is misplaced.
.
.
.
Everyone charged with a crime is protected by the presumption of innocence. The only legitimate purpose of bail is to determine an amount that will ensure a defendant comes back to court. Bail is not a tool to prejudge a defendant as guilty and jail that person until a trial.

Where prosecutors believe the defendant poses a threat if released, they must seek a dangerousness hearing, where a defendant has the right to offer opposing evidence and to present a defense. This process protects the public and upholds our constitutional rights.

Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins defended her decision to use high bail rather than seek a dangerousness determination in the case of Shawn McClinton because she claimed that the hearing could traumatize the alleged victim. First, an alleged victim’s testimony is not necessary at a dangerousness hearing; a judge can reach a decision based on other evidence. Second, any prosecution may be traumatizing for an alleged victim, but that does not mean that we send people to jail without a trial or without a court finding that there is sufficient justification to deprive them of their liberty.

The Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild fully supports the Massachusetts Bail Fund in its policy of posting all bails regardless of the charges. Bail means pretrial liberty for the well-to-do and pretrial incarceration for those with modest resources. We cannot allow prosecutors to use high bails to avoid a constitutional dangerousness hearing, and we cannot allow freedom to depend on wealth.

Thanks to the incredible work of the bail fund, defendants are actually realizing the promise of being innocent until proven guilty, and our judges and prosecutors are being forced to adhere to the law.

Bonita Tenneriello, Cochair
Zachary Lown, Board member
Massachusetts chapter National Lawyers Guild
Tenneriello works as an attorney with Prisoners’ Legal

#bospoli #massachusettsbailfund #nlgma @rollins4da

🗣🗣1.You have the right to remain silent. That means you do not have to answer any questions. If you are on foot, that includes questions about your name. It always includes questions about where you are from.
2.Ask if you are being detained. If the answer is “no,” calmly walk away.
3.You do not have to consent to any search.
4.Ask for a lawyer.
5.You will NEVER talk yourself out of an arrest. Explaining yourself will provide evidence that will be used against you by the prosecution.
—> google “NLG Mass Chapter” for local resources ⚖️💪 ✊

Thanks to YOUR efforts, Boston became the second largest city to ban use of a face surveillance dragnet. Excellent work by all of the sponsors! 🌹💪

Call your Boston city councilor to support the Face Surveillance Ban scheduled for a vote tomorrow! .
.
.
This has the potential to create a surveillance dragnet that puts your face in a database every time you walk down a particular street. It will be used to target specific communities, people of color and immigrants. Big support from @muslimjusticeleague @join_sim @nlgma

Public defenders and criminal defense lawyers rally for Black Lives. #criminaldefenselawyers #blacklivesmatter

Legal observing the caravan with @nlgma for Families for Justice as Healing to #freeher - clemency, parole, release for incarcerated women under Covid-19 threat

NOT GUILTY! On all counts. That’s five in a row😄! 📷: my very happy client/friend. (Cheesy blog post forthcoming).

👊💼⚖️➡️ After an extraordinary hearing that lasted over 4 hours, Attorney Lown prevailed on behalf of his client in the Lynn District Court. The opposing party was attempting to use a restraining order to gain leverage over a divorce proceeding that was being heard in a different court. Attorney Lown exposed the ploy. At the end of the day, Judge Jean Curran denied the restraining order. Lown’s client emerged victorious.

“The (Lown Law) Firm” 😃

Amazing gift from Nick Feener @mmfeener 💼👊

.pro-gallery-wix-wrapper {display: block !important;} .pro-gallery-wix-wrapper .gallery-item-container {opacity: 1 !important; display: block !important;}

Atty Lown provides testimony for Nat’l Lawyers Guild in support of “de-carceration” Bill

Stop And Frisk did not reduce crime

Lown beats back false accusations at restraining order hearing in Chelsea District Court

Other lawyers give Attorney Lown top ranking

Fifth "Not Guilty" in a row

Lown defeats wrongful restraining order in Lynn District Court

Attorney Lown wins Green Card for young couple

Suppression victory limits police intrusion

Attorney Lown convinces DA to drop “reckless driving” charge

DA Still Prosecuting Crimes She Pledged to Drop

Attorney Lown wins Clerk Magistrate hearing

Lown wins ‘Not Guilty’ for client in mis-identification case

Will Rachael Rollins back down?

Thousands of OUI Breath Tests to be Thrown Out, Again

Quick Not Guilty Verdict for OUI Client

What We Did In Vietnam

Lown wins 'Not Guilty' after Cops harass, then wrongly accuse young man

​