Commonwealth v. Dilworth

Held that the court will apply a less rigorous standard when evaluating equal protection claims in the context of alleged discriminatory policing during the investigatory phase of a case. Specifically, the court ruled that the Commonwealth was required to comply with a discovery order relating to the Boston police department’s undercover monitoring of social media accounts belonging to suspected gang members, and that in evaluating defendant’s equal protection claim that the police monitored social media accounts based on the target’s race, the less rigorous standard, set forth in Commonwealth v. Long, 152 N.E.3d 725, was proper. The standard requires that the defendant to produce evidence upon which a reasonable person could rely to infer that the officer discriminated on the basis of the defendant’s race or membership in another protected class, after which the Commonwealth must rebut the inference by establishing a race-neutral reason. The court also held that the Commonwealth failed to provide other compelling reasons why it could not comply with the order.