The Appeals Court has unsurprisingly upheld the conviction of a man who allegedly called his ex-wife after receiving a restraining order forbidding such contact.
In 2019 the wife got a restraining order against the husband. In the order, the court prohibited him from contacting the woman “in person, by telephone, in writing, electronically or otherwise, either directly or through someone else.”
Between December 2020 and January 2021, just prior to their divorce, the man allegedly called the woman twice using a number she knew to be his. The calls were “auto rejected” by the woman’s phone and she must have reported the unlawful contact to police because, shortly thereafter, the man was charged with violating the restraining order.
At trial, the woman testified that she recognized her ex’s number and then provided the court with screenshots of the blocked calls.
The man was convicted and he appealed the decision. The Appeals Court upheld the verdict. In its opinion, the Appeals Court writes,
a rejected phone call or other contact can violate an abuse prevention order even if there is no verbal communication between the parties. Although the defendant argues that the Commonwealth did not prove that the “auto rejected” call was not made accidentally, accident is an affirmative defense that must be “fairly raised” before the judge will require the Commonwealth to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant did not present any evidence regarding the possibility of an accident at trial, but rather only speculated during closing argument that the “auto rejected” call might have been “a mistake” or “butt dial.” (Citations omitted.)
The full text of the opinion is attached below.