The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court holds oral arguments in appellate cases from September through May and issues opinions on those cases throughout the year. WGBH Morning Edition Host Joe Mathieu spoke with Northeastern University law professor and WGBH legal analyst Daniel Medwed about a case that has caught his attention this month. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.

Joe Mathieu: So oral arguments resume at the SJC this week. What's the most notable case you're looking at here on the calendar?

Daniel Medwed: Well, the one that caught my eye is actually on the calendar for this morning. It's called Commonwealth versus Tyrokie Evans, and it concerns a controversial police-citizen encounter on the streets of Boston. Here's what happened: about two years ago, the Boston Police Department received reports of gunfire in Roxbury. The BPD dispatched two armed, white police officers to the scene. Even though there was no description of a suspect, the officers decided to canvass or patrol an area of lower Roxbury that they characterized a "high crime." While there, they saw a 17-year-old African-American teenager walking down the street with his hands in his pockets. As the police approached in their vehicle, the teenager averted his eyes and turned his body in what the police characterized as a bladed stance semi-perpendicular to the vehicle. The teenager was also less than effusive [and] largely non-responsive when asked a few questions by the police. All of this prompted the police to open the door to their car door, and long story short, the teenager ran off, the police gave pursuit, stopped him and retrieved a gun from someone they later determined to be Tyrokie Evans. So the legal question in this case is whether the police had what's called reasonable suspicion to justify stopping Mr. Evans and searching him.

Mathieu: So what did the trial judge do? Did the lower court support the police officer's reasoning here?

Medwed: Absolutely. The motion judge -- the lower court judge -- deferred to the judgment of the officers in light of their training and experience, and employed what's called a totality of the circumstances approach. They weighed all of these different facts and details -- the hands in the pockets, the averted eyes, the bladed body stance [and] the non-responsiveness -- and determined that yes, it was reasonable to suspect Mr. Evans of criminal activity. What remains to be seen is whether the SJC on appeal will view the case differently given the history of racial tension in Boston and the possibility that there were very innocent explanations for Mr. Evans' behavior.

Mathieu: How does this turn out, then? Will the SJC reverse the conviction, or is this too complex to tell?

Medwed: I'll go out on a limb here. I think the SJC may very well reverse this case and side with Mr. Evans, and here's why. First, there is a lot of data -- admittedly, some of it's pretty dated -- pointing to this tense history between the Boston Police Department and the African-American community. For instance, from 2007 to 2010, 63 percent of police stops of people in the city of Boston involved African-American targets, even though African-Americans comprise about 25 percent of the city's population. Second, and more notably, the SJC has this long standing tradition of protecting individual rights in the Fourth Amendment search and seizure space. There was a famous case from 2016 involving an African-American named Jimmy Warren, who fled from the police when he was approached. The police claimed that that behavior was evidence of consciousness of guilt that they could use in determining whether there was reasonable suspicion to stop Mr. Warren. The SJC said no. For an African-American to run from the police in the city of Boston, that could be quite innocent: concern for safety [or] concern for being charged wrongfully with a crime. I think that this case, Evans is a natural extension of that Warren precedent. And for that reason, I think the SJC may very well agree with Mr. Evans and reverse this.

Mathieu: Consciousness of guilt. That is quite a concept, Daniel. Do you think we'll have to wait a while for a decision?

Medwed: Under the SJC's own rules, they aspire to issue opinions within 130 days of oral argument. So maybe by the time we all thaw out in the spring we'll have an opinion.