Case Results

In addition to our recent trial victories, over the last year Urbelis Law has successfully had dozens of complaint applications denied at clerk magistrate’s hearings, successfully represented individuals in 209A hearings, had significant amounts of money returned from civil forfeiture proceedings, and successfully resolved dozens of other serious criminal cases for our very satisfied clients.

Below is just a sample of our recent case results over the past year or so, covering a variety of different criminal charges and legal issues.

District Court– Felony trial
CHARGES: Assault and Battery on Family/ Household Member, Witness Intimidation, Kidnapping. Our client’s ex- fiancé testified at trial against our client, alleging that he had struck her in the head, taken her phone so that she could not call for help, and locked her in a bathroom for hours. She later took out a restraining order against him while the case was pending. At trial, Attorney Urbelis delivered a blistering cross- examination, demonstrating her inconsistent stories and motive to lie and get him of the house; so she could continue to live there, alone, while he remained legally obligated to pay the mortgage and all of the bills. There was also evidence that she had attempted to have another man move in with her, once she got our client out of the house.
RESULT: Not Guilty on all charges.

District Court- Felony trial
CHARGES: Strangulation/ Suffocation, Assault and Battery on a Family/ Household Member. Our client was arrested for these charges after his apartment building’s security found his girlfriend outside of his apartment, her head bleeding, blood on the walls, and she was accusing him of a brutal attack. He was released on a very high bail, and hired Urbelis Law. Attorney Urbelis’s investigation uncovered a different version of events, and our client decided to take the case to trial.
RESULT: The Commonwealth called our client’s ex girlfriend as their primary witness, and through cross- examination Attorney Urbelis exposed a much different account that she had initially reported to police. Our client was acquitted of both charges, and his bail was returned to him.

Superior Court- felony trial

INDICTMENTS: Our client was indicted by a grand jury six months later Assault with a Dangerous Weapon (firearm) and Unlawful Possession of a Firearm (which carries a mandatory minimum of 18 months in jail up to 5 years in state prison). While my client was offered a plea, it would have required mandatory jail time as well as subsequent deportation has he’s not a United States citizen. We declined, and fought the indictments for two years.
RESULT: Prior to trial, our motion to dismiss the Assault with a Dangerous Weapon charge was ALLOWED. We proceeded to trial on the charge of unlawful possession of a firearm, and after trial our client was found NOT GUILTY, resulting in no adverse immigration consequences.

Superior Court– Trial for felony indictments
INDICTMENTS: Assault and Battery with a Dangerous Weapon causing serious bodily injury (ABDW- SBI), Operating Under the Influence causing serious bodily injury (OUI- SBI). Our client was indicted by a grand jury after a horrific accident which left a 25 year old woman unconscious, hospitalized for 3 weeks, and with permanent injuries. Police on scene performed field sobriety tests on our client, and believed that he was intoxicated. He admitted to having a few beers, and that he was coming from the local strip club. Witnesses, surveillance, and a dash cam of a Lyft driver enabled the state police accident reconstruction team to determine that our client was accelerating from zero to 49 mph in under 5 seconds at the time he struck the pedestrian- victim, in the South End of Boston, during the busy hours of a Saturday night. The OUI- SBI charge carried a minimum mandatory sentence of 180 days in the house of corrections, up to 10 years in state prison. He hired Urbelis Law.
RESULT: While Attorney Urbelis tried to negotiate a plea to take the OUI- SBI off the table, the district attorney’s office would not do so, and in fact recommended at least a 2 year prison sentence due to the victim’s injuries. Attorney Urbelis and his client were unwilling to accept that, believing that the evidence was insufficient relating to his impairment. They took both indictments to trial, and Attorney Urbelis was able to have his client’s bar receipt from the strip club excluded as evidence, meaning it was never considered at trial. Our client was acquitted of the more serious OUI- SBI indictment. He was found guilty of ABDW- SBI due to the reckless nature of his driving with the dangerous weapon (motor vehicle) that caused serious injuries, and he was sentenced to serve six months in the house of corrections. However, because there is no minimum mandatory on this indictment, he was released on parole after serving just 90 days.

Boston Municipal Court- OUI trial
CHARGE: Operating Under the Influence. Our client was involved in a fender- bender. He exchanged papers with the other driver, and called for a tow of his vehicle. Police arrived and conducted an investigation, which included field sobriety tests of our vehicle. Police reported the strong odor of alcohol coming from our client’s breath. He was arrested for OUI. He hired Urbelis Law to represent him.
RESULT: Attorney Urbelis took the case to trial, and our client was acquitted of the charge. A Not Guilty verdict was entered.

District Court- Motion to Suppress OUI vehicle stop.
CHARGE: Operating Under the Influence. The Watertown Police Department received a call that a vehicle (later identified as our client’s) was operating erratically, in and out of lanes, and almost striking numerous other cars. The caller provided a description of the car and our client’s license plate. WPD responded to the area, observed our client’s car stopped in the middle of the road’s travel lane, with no traffic signals indicating for him to stop. Police activated emergency lights to pull our client over, and our client then drove approximately 100 yards forward before coming to a stop on the side of the road. Police then observed our client to smell like alcohol, have slurred speech, and when asked to exit his vehicle, he fell onto the ground. He was arrested for OUI, and before towing his car, and inventory search yielded two empty bottles of tequila in the front seat.
RESULT: Attorney Urbelis filed a motion to suppress the stop. After an evidentiary hearing, the government failed to present the requisite evidence relating to the caller, which was the basis for the stop, and our motion was ALLOWED. That means that all evidence gathered as a result of the stop cannot be used at trial, and as a result, the case was then dismissed.

District Court– client facing deportation resulting from old cases
MOTION TO VACATE CONVICTION: Our client is a Guatemalan national who has lived in the United States since 1992. During the 1990’s, he pled guilty to two misdemeanor driving offenses; he has since had no contact with the criminal justice system. In 2023, through his immigration attorneys, he applied for, but was denied, permanent residency (“green card”) due to these misdemeanor convictions from 30 years prior. His immigration attorneys referred him to Urbelis Law.
RESULT: We reviewed his case and circumstances, and determined that he was denied effective assistance of counsel in those two misdemeanor cases. The court agreed, and vacated those convictions. He is now in the process of obtaining his green card.

District Court– Sex Offenses
CHARGE: Disseminating photograph/ video of an unsuspecting nude person (felony; sex- related offense). Our client is a college student who surreptitiously recorded himself having sex with a female student. That female student then began a relationship with our client’s younger brother, who showed her the video our client had uploaded to their shared google drive. The female student then called the police and our client was charged. 

RESULT: After gathering all of the information on the case, we realized that our client was mis- charged; he SHOULD have been charged with photographing/ videotaping an unsuspecting nude person, NOT with dissemination of such material, as he never sent it to his younger brother, or to anyone else. We did not alert the prosecutor to this mistake, until the day of trial, at which time it was too late for the prosecutor to amend the charge to what it should have been. Rather than moving to dismiss and risk the prosecutor simply taking out a new complaint, though, we resolved the case with one year of pretrial probation; no admission, no CWOF. As long as our client stays out of trouble for one year, the case ends in full dismissal, with no conviction to a felony and no sex offender registration.

District Court– Sex Offense
CHARGE: Indecent Assault and Battery. Our client was in a convenience store, when he told a sixteen year old girl that there was a bug on her, and then beg swatting at her backside. She accused him of slapping her butt. When she told her father of the situation, they went to the police, who obtained the surveillance video from the store.
RESULT: Prior to trial, the prosecutor amended the charge down to simple assault and battery, and offered a plea deal to our client. We declined, and elected to have a bench trial. We believe that the evidence, most significantly the video, did not meet the proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard to convict the defendant of any crime. The court agreed, and found our client NOT GUILTY.

Boston Municipal Court– OUI 2nd offense trial
CHARGE: Operating Under the Influence, 2nd Offense. Our client was pulled over after driving 50 mph in a 25 mph zone. He was arrested for OUI 2nd offense (first offense was a conviction from 2014). He refused the breathalyzer, which was beneficial in taking the case to trial, but it led to an immediate 3 year administrative license suspension from the RMV, for a 2nd offense refusal. He hired Urbelis Law, and we took the case to trial. We were able to get a trial within 5 months of his arrest. At trial, the arresting state trooper testified that our client had bloodshot/ glassy eyes, slurred speech, was unsteady on his feet, and argumentative. Our client made the right decision to refuse to submit to the field sobriety tests requested by the trooper, as it minimizes the evidence against him, and his refusal cannot be admitted as evidence at trial.
TRIAL VERDICT: NOT GUILTY. Attorney Urbelis immediately filed a motion to reinstate our client’s driver’s license, which was ALLOWED, and the administrative suspension was lifted. Our client was back driving just 5 day after his acquittal.

Boston Municipal Court- Restraining Order Violation

CHARGE: Violation of a 209A restraining order. The complaining witness had a lifetime restraining order against our client, the father of her child. The lifetime restraining order prevented our client from ever contacting either the complaining witness, or their child in common. In April, our client was arrested for allegedly violating that lifetime restraining order. He was held without bail pending his arrangement. His father hired Urbelis Law, and we were able to appear at his arraignment, and have him released on personal recognizance. After reviewing the case, prior to the next court date, we filed a motion to dismiss; the allegations did not amount to violation of the restraining order.
RESULT: Motion to dismiss allowed, case dismissed.

Superior Court– First Degree Murder indictment
CHARGE: First- degree Murder. At just 19 years old, our client was involved in a murder; however, he was NOT the individual who committed the killing, nor was he ever alleged by law enforcement to have been the shooter. 25 minutes prior to the killing, our client is on convenience store surveillance video watching the eventual victim enter the store. 20 minutes before the killing, after leaving the convenience store and entering his vehicle, our client can be seen on video picking up the eventual shooter on the side of the road. 15 minutes prior to the killing, our client can be seen on video dropping the eventual shooter off, in the area of the victim, and where the lethal shooting happened. For 5 minutes after dropping off the shooter, our client can be seen driving around the block 3 times, with his headlights off. The shooter had motive to kill the victim; the victim was under investigation for killing the shooter’s brother. Days later, prior to our client being charged, he made the fatal mistake of voluntarily going into the homicide unit of Boston Police Department, without a lawyer, because they had called him in. He wanted to “clear things up.” This hour long interview eventually led to his downfall, where he had attempted to “distance himself” from the killing, but it backfired and ended up appearing very incriminating. (Never go in to a police interview without an attorney!) He was eventually indicted for first- degree murder, and held without bail. In Massachusetts, you don’t need to kill someone in order to be charged with murder, and there is no “accessory to murder” charge. If you are believed to have knowingly assisted another person in any crime, including murder, you are just as guilty of that underlying offense as the perpetrator under a “joint venture” theory.
Our client had grown up in and out of homeless shelters with his family, had a learning disability, and was just one month away from graduating high school prior to the arrest. Immediately after his arrest, his mother and sister contacted Urbelis Law, and collaborated with family and friends to come up with a retainer to hire Urbelis Law to defense their son/ brother in the prosecution this capital offense. Over the next 3.5 years, Attorney Urbelis grew close with the family, and believed strongly in his client.
RESULT: After reviewing all of the evidence, developing a strong relationship with our client for the 3.5 years he was held without bail (many factors, including the Covid pandemic causing a court backup for years), we were ready for trial. We felt strongly that the government would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that our client knew that the other person was going to commit murder, and that our client would be acquitted. However, if we lost, our client would spend the rest of his life in prison, without any possibility of parole. As the trial date approached, and our client now 23 years old, we were able to resolve the matter in a way that would likely have him out by the time he’s 25 years old. With our recommendation, our client agreed that this plea was just too good to pass up. In a way, it was like an insurance policy; because in the (what we all believed to be very unlikely) event that our client was found guilty, his life would literally be over, locked in a cell until he dies. We agreed to a reduced manslaughter plea with a 6- 8 year prison sentence. Our client already had 3.5 years of pretrial detention “credit” towards that sentence, and he’d now also accrue “good time” credit during his prison commitment. He’ll likely be eligible for parole in just over 1 year, and even if not paroled be entitled to release in 2- 2.5 years. Our client and his family were extremely thankful for this outcome, given the gravity of what he’d been facing. At the conclusion of the plea, while in the court’s custody but prior to being transported to state prison, our client reminded Attorney Urbelis that he promised the client his first- ever dinner at a premiere steakhouse upon his release; Attorney Urbelis couldn’t be more excited to fulfill that promise.