I'm $kipping the game today. Sorry.
"Judge puts DA, police on notice; Defendant seeks retrial in officer’s slaying in 1993" by John R. Ellement | Globe Staff August 26, 2014
A Superior Court judge said Monday that the reputation of the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk district attorney’s office is under scrutiny as Sean K. Ellis seeks a new trial in the 1993 murder of a Boston officer, John J. Mulligan.
Wasn't that under Menino? Between him and Patrick, this state has become sh**.
Related: Giving the BPD a Mulligan
And now I'm giving it to you.
Speaking from the bench on the first of a multiple-day hearing into the investigation that led to Ellis’s first-degree murder conviction, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol Ball noted lawyers for Ellis assert that police and prosecutors violated court rules in building their case against him.
Both agencies, she said, have their “reputations on the line.’’
One of the issues raised by appellate attorney Rosemary C. Scapicchio is the contention that Suffolk prosecutors, then led by Phyllis Broker as chief of the homicide unit, and police detectives failed to disclose a Boston officer told investigators he believed Mulligan was killed by a fellow member of the force.
And they framed this guy?
Scapicchio contends that the failure of the prosecution to hand over documents related to the officer’s statement made her client’s trial constitutionally flawed because his trial lawyers, Norman Zalkind and David Duncan, did not have the opportunity to consider using it as part of their defense.
Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office, which inherited the case, has filed court papers that show the defense was given at least two reports about the allegations made in 1993 by the now-deceased officer, George Foley.
Prosecutors contend that the report should put an end to the matter, but Ball said from the bench that she will let Scapicchio question detectives who were involved in the investigation. The judge also said that she believes the key witness will be Broker, who oversaw the investigation for then-Suffolk District Attorney Ralph C. Martin II.
Broker was also the prosecutor all three times Ellis went on trial in the Mulligan case. The first two times, the juries could not reach a unanimous verdict, but the third panel convicted Ellis in 1995, leading to his current life sentence without the possibility of parole.
“If there is a pinpoint issue in this case, that is it,’’ Ball said.
The defense has subpoenaed Broker, who is retired and living out of state. Prosecutors said Broker told them she routinely provided every police report she got to the defense.
Ball chastised prosecutors for failing to quickly track down Broker, who had been appointed a district court judge in Woburn before she retired, asking, “How hard is it to find out where her pension is being sent?’’
The defense has also subpoenaed two disgraced Boston police detectives, Kenneth Acerra and Walter Robinson, who admitted in federal court that they stole money from drug dealers, an illegal activity that Ellis’s attorneys contend Mulligan also participated in.
Ball said she expects both former detectives to invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if they are called to testify in the hearing.
I'm starting to think that the Fifth should only apply to private, legal citizens and not official authority in the guise of public service.
During questioning Monday, Boston Police Sergeant Detective Thomas J. O’Leary, who was one of the leaders of the task force that investigated Mulligan’s murder, testified that he knew Foley, and that he considered the officer’s allegation to be a result of chronic alcoholism and mental illness.
“George Foley had a vision,’’ said O’Leary, who interviewed Foley over his allegation a few days after Mulligan’s murder. “We didn’t believe it when Foley first told us about it. . . Foley told us he made it up.’’
The hearing continues Tuesday.
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Also see: Report issued 21 years after killing puts doubt on detective
How dare you doubt the fine men and women in AmeriKan law enforcement? How dare you?!
