Sebastian Pacheco (’13) Makes Appellate Oral Argument Before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
BU Law’s Criminal Law Clinic helps prepare former student for career milestone.
As a student in BU Law’s Criminal Law Clinic, Sebastian Pacheco (’13) learned a very important lesson from his mentor and supervisor, Professor David Breen. “First and foremost,” Breen told his students, “a prosecutor is an officer of the court and a servant of the community. We should never lose sight of the ultimate goal: doing justice.”
Professor Breen’s words stayed with Pacheco as he began his career as a prosecutor. He had the opportunity to bring them to life last week in his first appellate oral argument before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC).
Pacheco began working in the Bristol County District Attorney’s office in late August after a year-long clerkship. On his very first day of work, the chief of appeals told him there was a first-degree murder case that hadn’t been assigned to anyone, and asked if he felt ready to handle it. Pacheco said he was grateful for the vote of confidence, and responded with an enthusiastic “yes.”
“Because the deadline for submitting the brief was October 1, I had one month to research and write everything from scratch,” Pacheco recalls. “The four months that I served as a Rule 3:03 prosecutor in BU Law’s student prosecutor clinic had given me the experience I needed to handle it. I knew that for the brief, the key would be thorough research and clear writing. For the oral argument, the clinic had given me sufficient opportunity to gain confidence standing and giving an argument before a court.”
The case is a tragic one, in which the defendant was convicted of first-degree murder, having shot a gas station clerk twice in the face and head in the process of a robbery. After stealing $1,040, the defendant attempted to dispose of the murder weapon and his clothes behind the gas station. The crime was also recorded by the gas station’s security cameras, which showed that it took only eight seconds from the time he walked into the store until he shot the victim, indicating that he had every intention of shooting as soon as he walked through the door.
The jury convicted the defendant of first-degree murder on the theories of deliberate premeditation and felony-murder. On appeal, the defendant argued that certain evidence should have been suppressed, and that his sentence of first-degree murder should be reduced to either second-degree murder or manslaughter because he suffers from a mental illness. Pacheco argued against both of those issues before the SJC, asking the Court to affirm the defendant’s conviction of first-degree murder.
“I was extremely excited to make my debut in front of the SJC on such an important case,” says Pacheco. He credits the police and trial team with doing an outstanding job investigating the case. “In arguing the appeal, I felt a great responsibility to preserve and vindicate the hard work the police and trial prosecutors put into bringing this defendant to justice. This was a horribly tragic death. So most of all, I felt a responsibility to the victim and the victim’s loved ones.”
Pacheco says he was inspired to become an assistant district attorney from his experience working with Professor Breen in the Criminal Law Clinic. He was a member of the clinic for his entire third year of law school, and chose to focus on prosecution during his second semester.
“Over the course of the semester, I prosecuted seven cases on behalf of the Norfolk Count District Attorney’s Office in Quincy District Court,” Pacheco recalls. He was solely responsible for all aspects of the prosecution, and his clinic experience culminated in a successful trial against a very experienced defense attorney, in which the jury returned guilty verdicts against the defendant for Operating Under the Influence of Alcohol and Negligent Operation of a Motor Vehicle.
“I still find it amazing that, in the course of one semester, I was able to get real, hands-on experience handling everything from pre-trial conferences, motion practice, and a full jury trial in a Massachusetts District Court,” he says. “That’s the wonderful thing about the BU Law Criminal Clinic. By the time I graduated law school, I really did feel that I had already been practicing law for almost a full year before I even sat for the bar or started my clerkship.”
After graduating from BU Law in the spring of 2013, Pacheco worked for a year at the Massachusetts Appeals Court as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Associate Justice Diana Maldonado. “I am very grateful to Justice Maldonado because she gave me the opportunity to perform extensive research and writing on almost every case on her docket,” says Pacheco.
“In addition, as a clerk I observed a full court-year’s worth of Appeals Court oral arguments, so when I entered the Bristol County DA’s Appeals Unit, I felt confident and eager to begin my career as an advocate.”
In keeping with his clinic experiences with Professor Breen, Pacheco has thoroughly enjoyed his first few months as an ADA. “My favorite thing about being an ADA is the opportunity to make a direct and positive impact on the community,” he says. “As prosecutors, we sometimes deal with very disturbing facts, and we are forced to make tough decisions every day. But, it is important to remember what Professor Breen taught us: that the defendants we prosecute are also members of the community we are trying to protect.”