Bottoms up!
State Police didn’t deliberately withhold info in 2017 fatal crash
Yeah, right, tell me another one.
"Reading drugged driving suspect had device to prevent drunken driving" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff August 25, 2017
The woman charged with driving under the influence of drugs in a fatal crash on Interstate 95 in Reading had an ignition interlock system intended to prevent her from driving drunk in her car, officials said.
Lynn E. DeWolfe of Tyngsborough was arraigned Friday in Woburn District Court on charges of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of drugs, leaving the scene of a crash that caused personal injury and death, and negligent operation of a motor vehicle, according to Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office.
DeWolfe was ordered held on $25,000 cash bail and will remain under house arrest if she posts that amount, Ryan’s office said. A not-guilty plea was entered on her behalf. Her lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment after the hearing.
The 50-year-old DeWolfe was driving erratically on I-95 North around 10 a.m. Thursday when her 2008 Saab 9-3 came into contact with a 2005 Subaru Impreza, causing that car to collide with a motorcycle being driven by a Bedford man, State Police said.
The motorcycle rider was rushed to the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, where he was pronounced dead, State Police said. He was identified by State Police Friday as Christopher Weisz, 42.
The Impreza was being driven by an 85-year-old Natick woman whose car first crashed into the Jersey barrier, causing it turn to spin completely around so it was traveling south in the northbound lanes when it hit the motorcycle, State Police said.
The Natick woman’s car also struck a 2010 Toyota Camry and a 2012 Toyota Corolla.
She and the Camry and Corolla drivers were taken to area hospitals for treatment of minor injuries.
According to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, DeWolfe was twice convicted of operating under the influence of alcohol and was required by state law to install an ignition interlock in her car starting on Aug. 7, 2015. It was to remain in place for two years.
DeWolfe violated the terms this March 16, automatically extending by six months the length of time the device remained in her car, according to the Registry.
There was a device in her car Thursday, but the machine searches for the presence of alcohol, not drugs, officials said.
DeWolfe was found guilty of driving drunk in Natick in 1985 and in Medway in 2005. She has also been involved in four crashes prior to Thursday and now has had her right to drive revoked as an “immediate threat” to public safety, according to the RMV.
After allegedly causing the fatal crash, DeWolfe did not stop her car and pull over to the side of the road as required, State Police allege.
Instead, she was involved in other crashes between Exits 38 and 42 on I-95 until she was taken into custody near Exit 42 by a trooper and a Wakefield police officer, State Police said.
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Related: Driver charged with OUI after deadly Reading crash
We still don't know what kind of drugs she was on.
"‘The fact that she could have been stopped that morning is heartbreaking’" by Shelley Murphy Globe Staff April 29, 2018
The driver, Lynn DeWolfe, 51, a twice-convicted drunk driver with a long record of violations and a breath-test device installed in her car, struck another car, triggering a second crash that killed motorcyclist Christopher Weisz, a 42-year-old Bedford man on his way to work.
DeWolfe, of Tyngsborough, now faces charges that include driving under the influence of drugs. As her case cycles through the criminal justice system, records point to a series of missed warning signs on the road to tragedy and raise questions about how she could ever have been allowed to proceed after Trooper Daniel Hanafin stopped her, why the trooper who took the 911 calls didn’t act more urgently, and why the State Police have done so little to investigate since.
I think we know why. It would make them look bad, and they are probably too busy putting in for overtime they never worked.
The agency quietly conducted an internal investigation which concluded that Trooper Hanafin — the son of a retired lieutenant colonel — didn’t have probable cause to arrest DeWolfe, but should have written a report about the earlier crash, records show, but for eight months the State Police didn’t tell prosecutors about the 911 calls and withheld details of Hanafin’s fateful decision, according to the Middlesex district attorney’s office. Police also never told Weisz’s widow about the earlier crash — she learned about it from the Globe.
“It’s painful enough that he died,” Alexis Weisz said. “The fact that she could have been stopped that morning is heartbreaking.”
DeWolfe had a history of drunk driving, refusing breathalyzers, speeding, and crashes spanning 30 years. Just last June, she collided with a motorcyclist on her way to a Registry of Motor Vehicles hearing, records show, but this time the consequences were deadly. A husband and father of three was dead.
“So many people tried to stop her that day, the guy who called 911, the guy she hit,” Weisz, 46, said. “I don’t know what that state trooper was thinking, and I clearly don’t think he did a thorough job at all.”
State Police spokesman David Procopio said the department found that Hanafin, a four-year veteran of the force, “took all appropriate steps” to determine whether DeWolfe was impaired.
Hanafin’s attorney, Daniel Moynihan, called him an “excellent trooper” and said he observed DeWolfe walking and talking and saw no evidence that she was impaired.
“A trooper can only arrest somebody when he has probable cause, and he did not have probable cause,” Moynihan said.
Asked whether Hanafin took the earlier 911 calls into account, Moynihan said the two reports of erratic driving still didn’t give the trooper probable cause.
In August, DeWolfe pleaded not guilty to charges that include operating under the influence of drugs, leaving the scene of an accident resulting in personal injury, and negligence. Her attorney, Arnold “A.J.” Blank, declined to comment.
Neither DeWolfe nor the driver who struck Weisz has been charged with his death.
As of last week, eight months after the accident, State Police said they were still working on an accident reconstruction report, trying to piece together what occurred on a stretch of highway on that partly cloudy summer day.
On the morning of Aug. 24, Christopher Weisz — Boy Scout leader, Little League coach, and go-to neighborhood fix-it man — was easing back into his weekday routine. He and his wife and their children — Logan, Maxwell, and Grace — had just returned from a vacation in Oregon, where they had watched the solar eclipse. He hopped on his recently restored 1987 BMW motorcycle and headed to his IT engineering job at Al Foundry in Wakefield.
Lynne DeWolfe woke up at 6 that morning at her boyfriend’s house in Tyngsborough. She put on her bathing suit, a cover-up, and flip flops, and prepared for a trip to the beach, according to police reports. She later told police that before heading out she took two prescription medications — 0.5 mg of Lorazepam and 300 mg of Gabapentin. Lorazepam is typically used to treat anxiety. DeWolfe said she took Gabapentin, a pain medication, for a back injury.
Chalk another death up to the opioid crisis.
At about 8 a.m., she climbed into her silver Saab. She had to blow into a straw connected to an ignition interlock device, which detects alcohol — but not drugs — on the breath. The engine starts only if a driver’s breath is alcohol-free.
This practice was routine for DeWolfe. She had been convicted of drunken driving in 1987 and 2005, and was stripped of her license for 10 years, according to Registry of Motor Vehicles records.
In order to get her license reinstated in 2015, DeWolfe was required to equip her car with the device. After a puff of breath, the engine started, and DeWolfe made her way onto the road.
Sometime before 8:30 a.m., Eric Carlson spotted a Saab flying up behind him on Route 3 South in Chelmsford. DeWolfe, according to records, was behind the wheel.
She drove too fast, then too slow, then in and out of lanes, stopping just shy of his bumper, Carlson told the Globe. Her manner was not aggressive but “dopey,” and she didn’t seem to have control of the vehicle, he said.
Carlson called 911, offered details on DeWolfe’s car and license plate, and said he thought she might be on drugs, according to police reports. He told a dispatcher her head was bobbing up and down.
Trooper Michael Benevento took that call but did not broadcast the warning over the police radio system. It was a busy morning, he later told State Police investigators.
“I feel he did not take it seriously at all,” Carlson told the Globe. Carlson said Benevento suggested to him that the erratic driver might have been texting while driving.
DeWolfe continued on Route 3. At 8:55 a.m., another motorist called 911 to report that DeWolfe sped up to his bumper twice in stop-and-go traffic then slammed into him. He said he’d tried to exchange accident paperwork with DeWolfe, and got the impression she was under the influence of drugs, according to police reports.
She was irate and appeared “out of it,” according to the motorist, whose identity was redacted from police records.
This time, Benevento dispatched Trooper Hanafin and alerted him via text message about the erratic driving call minutes earlier, according to the reports.
At the scene, DeWolfe told Hanafin that the other car had backed into her while she was stopped on the highway. She insisted she hadn’t drunk any alcohol or taken any drugs, according to police reports.
She refused to take a field sobriety test and requested a lawyer, according to the reports.
In Massachusetts, drivers automatically lose their license for a minimum of 180 days if they refuse to take a breathalyzer, but there’s no penalty for refusing to take a field sobriety test.
Donald Decker, a retired Marblehead police officer and coordinator for the state’s Drug Recognition Expert program, said officers can find probable cause even without a field sobriety test. They can arrest the person or call an ambulance if the person appears to be suffering a medical issue.
“If they see indicators of impairment, they need to decide is this person capable of driving down the highway if I let this person go,” Decker said. “If they don’t think that’s a good idea, they can detain that person.”
Hanafin told investigators he had DeWolfe blow into the ignition interlock device. She puffed into the machine and started the engine, and he concluded she wasn’t drunk. Next, he said, he administered a horizontal eye test, requiring her to follow his finger with her eyes.
Hanafin recalled telling Benevento that he initially suspected DeWolfe “might be impaired,” but changed his mind after considering her “balance, eyes and pupils, lack of slurred speech, and ability to answer questions correctly.”
At 9:14 a.m., DeWolfe was cleared to go.
Nineteen minutes later, some eight miles away, DeWolfe, according to police, crashed into a car driven by an 85-year-old Natick woman. The woman’s car struck a jersey barrier, spun around, and veered into oncoming traffic on Interstate 95 North in Reading, striking Weisz’s motorcycle and hitting two other cars, according to police reports.
DeWolfe drove away, striking more cars and triggering additional 911 calls before getting stuck in the median in Wakefield, police said. When police ordered her out of the car, she staggered and lost her balance, had difficulty focusing, and was unable to recall what month it was, according to reports.
Immediately, officers noted that DeWolfe wasn’t acting right. Her eyes were “droopy” and her speech thick, according to reports. Police arrested her and brought her to the Danvers barracks. There, a trooper trained as a drug recognition expert evaluated DeWolfe and concluded she was impaired, reports show.
Took a while for them to take effect, 'eh?
She was held overnight and pleaded not guilty the following day to charges.
As DeWolfe’s new criminal case wended its way through court, State Police commenced an internal investigation into Hanafin’s and Benevento’s actions. For eight months, the agency shared few details of that probe with prosecutors.
Meghan Kelly, spokeswoman for Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan, said State Police informed the office early in the investigation that DeWolfe was involved in a previous crash, but provided scant details. She said police forwarded a one-line report calling it a “minor two vehicle crash” with “no injuries or tows required.”
Kelly said prosecutors repeatedly requested all details and reports from the incident, but State Police “responded they could not release those documents while conducting their Internal Affairs investigation.” State Police eventually turned over the materials on Tuesday, weeks after the Globe contacted Weisz’s family and requested records from police.
Howard Friedman, a civil rights lawyer who specializes in police cases, called it shocking that police failed to immediately turn over all information to prosecutors.
Is it?
“To say we are not going to give you our reports because we are investigating our own people, that’s just not the way it works,” Friedman said.
Actually, that is the way it works!
On Friday, Procopio, the State Police spokesman, agreed it was “not appropriate” to keep information from prosecutors for so long and said the agency “will look into it.”
Yeah, don't hold your breath waiting for any accountability.
In October, State Police found Hanafin violated regulations for not writing a report, according to heavily redacted reports provided to the Globe. The department also sustained complaints of misconduct and unsatisfactory performance against Benevento for failing to broadcast or log the 911 call about DeWolfe’s alleged erratic driving. Both troopers were docked a day’s pay.
Benevento’s attorney, Lenny Kesten, said Benevento “passed the relevant information” along to Hanafin after learning that DeWolfe was involved in a car crash
Hanafin’s lawyer told the Globe that Hanafin wasn’t obligated to write a report about the earlier crash because nobody was injured and he estimated damage to the vehicles was less than $1,000.
Left to raise three children alone, Alexis Weisz has one simple question: Why didn’t anybody take DeWolfe’s keys away?
“There are so many loopholes or failures or mistakes,” Weisz said. “She had enough chances and was allowed to drive until she killed someone.”
The Registry of Motor Vehicles had been monitoring DeWolfe’s compliance with the ignition interlock device since she got her license back in May 2015, records show.
Records show that in March 2017, she failed two startup tests — registering blood alcohol concentration levels of .043 and a .033. Two months later, she failed a startup test by registering an alcohol level of .142.
She must have been blasted because that is a very high reading.
Related:
"The state’s Secretary of Public Safety has launched an investigation into the office responsible for ensuring the accuracy of police breathalyzers, amid accusations that the office withheld evidence that the machines may have provided hundreds of flawed results over a two-year period. The investigation follows allegations from defense attorneys that the Office of Alcohol Testing, which is overseen by the State Police, failed to turn over documents that could have shown what the lawyers say are faulty results. The attorneys, who represent 750 drunken driving defendants, have said that failure ultimately could affect 58,000 drunken driving cases since 2011, when the state first began using the machines......"
Now blow!
Then on June 20, 45 minutes before an RMV hearing officer would consider her recent violations, DeWolfe collided with a 21-year-old motorcyclist on Interstate 95 in Woburn, records show.
The motorcyclist, Brandon Egan, was transported to a Burlington hospital and later filed a suit against DeWolfe in Middlesex Superior Court, alleging she caused the crash and he suffered “serious and permanent injuries.”
No citations were issued, according to a State Police report, and DeWolfe drove away.
Minutes later she was at the Registry, where a hearing officer found that DeWolfe “has a very good record,” except for the two failed ignition breath tests in March. The one failure in May didn’t qualify as a violation under the law.
The hearing officer, who didn’t have legal authority to revoke DeWolfe’s license, extended the requirement that she use the interlock device program until later in the year.
Two months later, she’d crash her silver Saab again.....
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Also see:
State Police order investigation into their handling of fatal crash
Drugged driver charged with homicide 10 months after fatal crash
"Tyngsborough woman sentenced to 3 to 5-year prison term for fatal crash, minutes after state trooper let her go" by Shelley Murphy Globe Staff, May 28, 2019
WOBURN — Lynn DeWolfe cried as she pleaded guilty Tuesday to causing a fatal crash while driving under the influence of drugs in August 2017, just minutes after a state trooper let her drive away from a separate accident.
The 52-year-old Tyngsborough woman was led away in handcuffs after Middlesex Superior Judge Bruce R. Henry sentenced her to between three and five years in prison, followed by 10 years of probation, for the death of 42-year-old Christopher Weisz, a Bedford father of three.
Her license will be revoked for 15 years.
Outside the courthouse, Weisz’s widow, Alexis, said she and her relatives “will breathe a little freer” knowing DeWolfe is “behind bars and can’t do this to another family.”
She said she wished DeWolfe had received a longer sentence but felt it was fair, given the state guidelines, and was grateful to avoid a trial.
During Tuesday’s hearing, DeWolfe said she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression and was taking medication for those conditions, but it did not affect her judgment. She said she was knowingly and voluntarily pleading guilty to motor vehicle homicide, drugged driving, and other charges.
Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Julie Kunkel urged Henry to impose a seven to 10-year prison term. DeWolfe’s lawyer, Arnold Blank Jr., said she had completed in-patient and out-patient treatment for substance abuse and recommended she serve only a year.
Henry said he had considered the devastating loss suffered by Weisz’s family, the “terribly poor decisions made by Ms. DeWolfe to drive that day,” and the judgments of others — an apparent reference to the State Police. He said he believed DeWolfe had the potential to be rehabilitated.
The judge also ordered DeWolfe to perform 50 hours of community service while on probation, undergo mental health and substance abuse evaluations, submit to random drug screenings, and not use alcohol or marijuana.
On the morning of Aug. 24, 2017, DeWolfe, a twice-convicted drunk driver, crashed into a car driven by an 85-year-old woman on Interstate 95 in Reading, causing it to veer into oncoming traffic and strike Weisz’s motorcycle and two other cars, police said.
The crash drew more attention when The Boston Globe reported in April 2018 that DeWolfe had been questioned by a state trooper at the scene of a separate accident earlier that morning, and that State Police had withheld that information from prosecutors.
Oh, I'm sure they didn't mean to, just like they didn't mean to destroy all the payroll records regarding the overtime fraud.
What do you mean the reforms are slow to materialize and take root?
No one in law enforcement had told Weisz’s family about the earlier crash. His widow, now raising their children — Logan, Maxwell, and Grace — alone, learned of it from the Globe.....
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"Mass MoCA director to be arraigned in connection with fatal 2018 crash" by John Hilliard Globe Correspondent, June 7, 2019
The director of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art will be arraigned later this month in connection with a crash last July in North Adams that killed a motorcyclist, according to the city’s police chief and court clerk’s office.
Museum director Joseph Thompson will be arraigned June 19 at Northern Berkshire District Court on a misdemeanor charge of motor vehicle homicide by negligent operation, and a marked lanes violation, according to the clerk’s office and North Adams Police Chief Jason Wood.
Thompson was driving an Audi SUV that was involved in a crash with a motorcycle around 10:10 p.m. on July 20, 2018, near 761 Church St. in North Adams, officials said at the time.
The motorcycle’s operator, Steven Fortier, 49, of North Adams, was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Thompson and a passenger in the SUV did not have serious injuries, officials said.
The charges in the case were reported Wednesday by the Berkshire Eagle.
The crash was investigated by North Adams police, State Police detectives with the Berkshire district attorney’s office, and State Police crime scene and collision analysis and reconstruction experts.
North Adams police had to wait for an accident reconstruction report from the State Police before deciding whether to charge Thompson, Wood said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, some of these accidents which are serious in nature take longer to conclude because of the number of agencies that are involved,” Wood said.
A show-cause hearing in the case was held May 9, according to the clerk’s office and Wood. Following that hearing, Wood said, the court found probable cause to issue a complaint.
A spokesman for Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington declined comment Friday.
Thompson’s Pittsfield attorney, Timothy Shugrue, said his client cooperated with investigators and, immediately after the crash, tried to render aid to Fortier.
“It’s devastating,” Shugrue said. “It’s a tragedy, no matter what.”
Thompson was driving to a musical event in North Adams when the crash occurred, he said. A fellow museum employee was a passenger in the SUV.
Just before the crash, Shugrue said, Fortier was traveling head-on toward Thompson’s SUV at a high rate of speed.
To avoid a collision, Thompson swerved to the left and over the roadway’s double yellow lines, Shugrue said. Obstacles along the right side of the road kept Thompson from moving in that direction, Shugrue said.
As Thompson swerved to the left, the motorcycle struck the SUV’s passenger side, Shugrue said.
“If he hadn’t done that, it would have been a head-on collision, instead of a side collision,” Shugrue said.
Shugrue said the charges stem from Thompson crossing the road’s double yellow lines as he tried to avoid the crash.
Thompson will plead not guilty at the upcoming arraignment, he said.
After the crash, Thompson’s passenger called 911, and they waited at the scene for police to arrive, he said.
“He feels awful,” Shugrue said of Thompson. “This is a tragedy, but he tried to avoid the tragedy.”
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"Driver charged in fatal hit-and-run crash in Auburn, police say" by Emily Sweeney Globe Staff, June 7, 2019, 3:39 p.m.
A 24-year-old Taunton man ran away from police Thursday and hid inside a concrete drainage pipe in the woods after he drove a Ford Explorer on the wrong side of Route 20 in Auburn and crashed into two vehicles, killing one man and seriously injuring another, according to a police report filed in court.
When police found DeJesus Amaro hiding in the pipe, they said his breath smelled of alcohol and burnt marijuana.
Gotta recriminalize that.
The deadly crash occurred shortly after 1:15 p.m. Thursday, when the Ford Explorer that Amaro was driving crossed the double-yellow line near 475 Washington St. (Route 20) in Auburn and struck a Toyota Tacoma and Jeep Grand Cherokee.
The passenger in the Jeep, Michael Robidoux, was taken to UMass Memorial Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Robidoux, 54, owned Central Mass Towing in Auburn, according to his daughter-in-law, Brittany Girardi.
“He was a wonderful man who was taken too soon,” she said in a telephone interview.
The driver of the Jeep, a 45-year-old Worcester man, was seriously injured and was treated for a possible broken hip, possible punctured lung, whiplash, and numerous abrasions, the report said.
The driver of the Toyota was not injured, the report said.
An Auburn police sergeant was in an unmarked cruiser in a parking lot at 481 Washington St. and witnessed the fatal crash as it happened, according to the police report.
The sergeant was aware that Sutton police had just tried to pull over a red Ford Explorer, but the driver had refused to stop. That’s when he noticed a red Ford Explorer traveling west in the eastbound lane of Washington Street “driving extremely fast” and passing vehicles on Route 20.
The Explorer “lost control, swerved back into the westbound lane to avoid a crash, then struck the rear of the Toyota truck in the westbound lane, veered across the road into the eastbound lane, and struck the front of a Jeep Cherokee, head on,” the police report states.
The sergeant said he saw the driver of the Explorer — later identified as Amaro — sprint across a parking lot and flee into the woods.
At 2:10 p.m., Amaro was located by State Police K-9 and Auburn police hiding inside of a concrete drainage pipe a short distance into the woods, the report said.
Police said Amaro was on probation at the time of the crash and had outstanding warrants for his arrest. He does not have a driver’s license in any state, according to the police report.....
Why did the term illegal immigrant just come to mind?
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Says he only had one beer at the hockey game, and may God help them all.
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Time to party!
"For students with disabilities, a nightclub experience" by Ysabelle Kempe Globe Correspondent, May 17, 2019
This event is an annual dance for the young people who attend the Carter School, a public school that serves severely mentally and physically disabled students. The dance, meant to simulate a nightclub experience, is one of the only times the students are able to go out together into the city.
“Our students deserve it. They deserve to be young adults, to get out of the building, to have experiences, to be special,” said Mark O’Connor, principal at the Carter School. “Whether they end up loving it or extremely disliking it, they deserve to have these experiences.”
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And its off to college they go:
Hampshire College alumni aim to save their alma mater
They got five months to get rid of the dead weight or they won't be admitting freshman this spring.
"Bloomberg tells MIT graduates: ‘We can’t wait to act’ on climate change" by Alison Kuznitz Globe Correspondent, June 7, 2019
CAMBRIDGE — Michael R. Bloomberg, the three-term former New York City mayor and vocal climate change activist, frequently alluded to the pioneering leadership of President John F. Kennedy, who relied on MIT engineers to spearhead the Apollo 11 moon landing 50 years ago. Contrasting Kennedy with the current president, Bloomberg said it is not only significant that Americans succeeded in the space race — but that they had “tried to get there in the first place.”
I would say fly me to the moon, but I now believe that -- like most things presented to us in the ma$$ media -- that it was faked. The fact that no one else has performed the feat since 1972 leads me to believe they never went. The farthest we have gone is a space station.
I can already hear the critics out there claiming I am poisoning the well, blah, blah, blah, but that doesn't hold water. After the U.S. developed the atom bomb, did others just give up? Since when has man stopped trying to build a better mousetrap (anatomical charts exempted)?
Using a similar metaphor, MIT President L. Rafael Reif told the nearly 3,000 graduates to “shoot for the moon” and “hack the world” by pursuing bold ideas without fear.
Hack the world, huh?
“Make the world a little more like MIT: More daring and more passionate,” Reif said. “More rigorous, inventive, and ambitious. More humble, more respectful, more generous, more kind,” but Reif shared a gentler message as well, one of healing a broken world through common bonds of humanity. He likened today’s society to a “big, complicated family” stuck in the grips of a “terrible” argument.
Amid the solemn messages, there were lighter moments. Laughter and frenzied selfie-taking captured the excitement from the Class of 2019.....
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"Judge orders cellphone of assault accuser be given to Kevin Spacey’s lawyers" by Matt Rocheleau Globe Staff, June 7, 2019
A Nantucket District Court judge Friday ordered the man accusing Kevin Spacey of sexual assault to turn over his cellphone.
Spacey made a surprise appearance Monday in court, where his lawyers argued they should be allowed to examine the phone to try to extract information they claim was deleted, including text messages they say would have helped Spacey disprove the allegations against him.
Yeah, that sick sexual predator loves the camera.
Friday’s ruling from Judge Thomas S. Barrett orders that the phone be turned over by June 21 by whoever has it — the alleged victim; his mother, former WCVB-TV news anchor Heather Unruh; or the law office of Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who is representing the family on civil matters related to the case, although no civil suit has been filed.
The order says the phone must be given to the desk officer at the State Police Troop D headquarters in Middleborough so the defense team’s forensic expert, or his designee, can pick it up.
Barrett’s order includes a reminder about previous rulings he made calling for preservation of the phone’s contents from the date of the alleged assault, July 7, 2016, through Dec. 31, 2017.
The two-time Oscar winner allegedly plied the man, then 18, with drinks after the teen’s shift as a busboy at the bar ended. Spacey then allegedly unzipped the man’s pants and fondled him.
Who was serving an underaged man drinks anyway?
According to police reports, the alleged victim used his phone to record footage of the incident via Snapchat. The alleged victim also texted and called his then-girlfriend the night of the encounter.
Spacey’s Los Angeles-based attorney Alan Jackson said Monday that he believed cellphone records previously released to him by prosecutors weren’t complete or accurate. Jackson said that if he could access the phone, his own forensic expert could potentially resurrect items deleted from it.
Now I'm wondering what the State Police deleted.
The next hearing in the case is set for July 8.
The charge Spacey faces carries penalties of up to five years in prison or up to 2½ years in jail or a house of correction, and a requirement to register as a sex offender.
The accusation emerged about a year before the criminal case began. In November 2017, during an emotional press conference, Unruh publicly accused Spacey of sexually assaulting her son.
The alleged victim, who has a different last name than Unruh, has been named in court records. The Globe does not identify, without their consent, people who allege sexual assault.
Spacey’s film career has imploded since the fall of 2017, after numerous sexual misconduct accusations.
On Christmas Eve 2018, shortly after the Globe published a story online about the opening of the criminal case against Spacey, he surfaced in a bizarre YouTube video in which he appeared to assume the character he’d portrayed in the Netflix series “House of Cards.”
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"Owen Labrie loses appeal in N.H. Supreme Court" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff, June 7, 2019
Owen A. Labrie, whose sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl at St. Paul’s School in Concord in 2014 led to the disclosure of a 40-year pattern of sexual misconduct by faculty and staff at the elite New Hampshire school, lost his second major appeal Friday.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that Labrie was properly defended by famed Boston defense attorney J.W. Carney Jr. during his 2015 trial, and that they saw no reason for a new trial on a felony computer conviction that requires him to register as a sex offender.
“We hold that trial counsel’s failure to mention a specific defense to the computer services use charge in his opening statement and closing argument did not violate the defendant’s state constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel,’’ the court concluded. “We affirm.”
Labrie is imprisoned at the Merrimac County Department of Corrections facility in Concord, and is tentatively scheduled to be released from his one-year prison sentence June 24, according to jail records. His home address is in Turnbridge, Vt., and he is listed on that state’s sex offender registry.
The 3-0 defeat for the now 23-year-old Labrie is the second time that the New Hampshire Supreme Court has affirmed Labrie’s convictions related to the sexual assault of then-15-year-old Chessy Prout during the so-called senior salute at St. Paul’s School.
Last fall, the court completed its overall review of his trial, and ruled he was properly convicted by the jury of three counts of sexual assault, one count of endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of using computer services for a prohibited purpose.
Prout later wrote a book about her experiences at the school, the criminal and civil litigation that followed, and how she went from a being a nameless victim in a nationally watched criminal trial to outspoken advocate for young survivors of sexual assault.
Carney’s ineffective assistance of counsel warranted a new trial, Labrie claimed, but Carney, the court ruled, made a reasonable tactical decision by choosing to focus on “whether penetration occurred and whether the victim consented. Given the number of charges that required proof of penetration and the number of felony charges that required proof of lack of consent, this was a reasonable strategy.”
In Friday’s ruling, the court also rejected a defense technical legal argument that he could not be convicted for computer misuse because he used the school’s private Intranet network to send his messages to Prout, while the language of the law explicitly refers to the worldwide web, the Internet.
The court disagreed.....
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They have started another investigation, and now we know who finked on him as the kid was hung out to dry.
At least someone is getting a new trial:
"New trial starts for man convicted in 1985 killing" by Maria Cramer Globe Staff, June 7, 2019
PLYMOUTH — After 32 years in prison, Darrell Jones was released in 2017 when a Superior Court judge ruled his first murder trial was rife with problems: racist jurors; detectives who lied or tampered with evidence; and a defense attorney with serious conflicts of interest.
Oh, I'm sure they didn't mean it!!
Is there anyone out there who believes in American JU$TU$ anymore?
I mean, this is deep-blue and very progressive Ma$$achu$etts!
Now, Jones is again defending himself against the charges that he fatally shot a man outside a Brockton bar, and his lawyers fear the new trial could be more unjust than the first.
Some of the original witnesses have died, and others say they do not remember the details they testified to in court. Plymouth Superior Court Judge C.J. Moriarty recently rejected those claims, allowing their testimony from the 1986 trial to be used in court again. It will be read to the jury, with no opportunity for Jones’s lawyers to cross-examine them.
Then it is a sham trial!
Jones, who was 19 when he was convicted, has maintained his innocence and has refused to plead guilty to lesser crimes.
“This virtual replay of the first trial will actually be worse for Mr. Jones than the 1986 fiasco,” his lawyer, Paul Rudof, argued in a recent motion to dismiss the case.
That motion was denied, and on Friday the retrial began with prosecutors laying out much of the same argument presented at the first trial.
Assistant District Attorney Jessica Kenny said Jones, who at the time went by the nickname “Diamond,” shot Guillermo Rodriguez once in the stomach outside of Peter and Mary’s bar in Brockton on a cold, wet night on Nov. 11, 1985. There was no physical evidence or surveillance footage tying Jones to the killing, but Kenny said the testimony of witnesses who were at the bar that night proved Jones was the killer.
“The evidence you’ll hear at this trial is as simple as this: People who knew the defendant, who were familiar with him, saw what he did,” Kenny told the jury. “Even people who did not know him saw what he did.”
In his opening statement, Rudof cast doubt on the reliability of those witnesses. None were able to say they got a good look at the shooter’s face, he said, and many were drunk or high at the time. The witnesses all mentioned that the shooter was noticeably shorter than Rodriguez, who was 6 foot 1. Jones is 6 feet tall.
Rudof said there was another critical point: The shooter was seen running away from the scene and fleeing to another bar, where he threw away the gun that police later recovered. By contrast, Jones “was in the bar before the shooting and he was still in the bar after the shooting.”
OMG, this guy was railroaded!
Moriarty told the jury they would be hearing old testimony from witnesses who “for one reason or another are unable to testify” and that they “should not speculate about that trial in any way,” but testimony from that trial played a key role....
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There may yet be hope for Shaqille Brown, 'eh?
Related:
Three suspects charged in shooting of 16-year-old in Lawrence
Also see:
Our young people should grow up free from the fear of gun violence
"Former Minn. officer sentenced to 12½ years in shooting death of unarmed woman" by Matt Furber and Mitch Smith New York Times, June 7, 2019
MINNEAPOLIS — Mohamed Noor, a former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder in the 2017 shooting death of an unarmed woman who had called 911 seeking help, was sentenced Friday to about 12½ years in prison.
The punishment — far stricter than a term of probation Noor’s lawyers had sought — raised concerns in the area’s large Somali-American community about whether Noor, who was born in Somalia, was treated differently from how a white police officer would have been. Several protesters at the courthouse questioned the system’s fairness.
It is rare for prosecutors to try police officers for on-duty shootings. Of the small number of officers who have been convicted in such cases, they have rarely received the harshest punishments possible.
I would holler racism if I were him.
The sentence for Noor, the first Minnesota officer in decades to be convicted in an on-duty, fatal shooting, fell within state guidelines for his crimes.
Elsewhere, in the small number of cases where officers have been convicted, sentences have tended to be less strict than they might have been.
Dozens of people filed letters with the court seeking leniency from Judge Kathryn L. Quaintance for Noor, whose arrival as his precinct’s first Somali-American officer had been celebrated by the city’s mayor.....
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The article never mentioned the name of the victim, and think of the precedent: Kill a white foreigner, get a max sentence (cop is black, too); kill an American citizen, get absolved!
Unruh shouldn't feel too bad because they are searching his phone, too, and the threat of deportation is really stressing him out.
"Jury awards $11.5 million to Framingham girl in medical malpractice suit" by Danny McDonald Globe Staff, June 6, 2019
A jury has awarded $11.5 million to a Framingham girl whose family filed a medical malpractice suit against a radiologist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, finding that he was negligent in his care of her by not properly reacting to a heart problem she had 10 years ago.
Anna Coelho alleged that in April 2009, when she was an 18-month-old, there was “a significant delay in the diagnosis and treatment of myocarditis” that resulted in cardiac arrest and permanent brain damage. Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle.
Coelho was taken to the hospital on April 12, 2009 by her father with complaints of vomiting and possible dehydration, according to court documents. A chest x-ray was performed. Radiologist Dr. William Denison determined that “bronchiolitis v. atypical pneumonia was likely present,” according to court documents. According to Coelho’s attorneys, Denison failed to react accordingly to her enlarged heart.
He read the x-ray wrong?
Coelho’s attorneys had argued that if her enlarged heart had been identified and reported by Denison, “she would have undergone an echocardiogram, her myocarditis would have been diagnosed and treated, and more likely than not, Anna would not have suffered heart failure and cardiac arrest which resulted in her severe and permanent neurological injury.”
After a two-week trial in Middlesex Superior Court and deliberations over two days, a jury reached a verdict on Thursday, finding that Denison was negligent in his care and treatment of Coelho and that he was “a substantial contributing factor in causing injury” to her.
The jury found that Newton-Wellesley emergency department physician Dr. Ilhan Schwartz was not negligent in his care of Coelho.
William Thompson, an attorney with Boston firm Lubin & Meyer who represented Coelho, said his client, who is now 11, “functions in some ways as a 4-year-old in terms of her development,” because of the episode.
“We’re very happy that the jury recognized that the harm to Anna Coelho was preventable and the seriousness of that x-ray should not have been dismissed,” without further examination, he said during a phone interview on Thursday.
Attempts to reach Denison’s attorney were unsuccessful.
However, in court documents, defendants in the case argued that they “complied with the standard of care with respect to all of the treatment and care they provided to Anna Coelho.”
“Anna did not present with any signs or symptoms that would raise a suspicion of viral myocarditis and she was appropriately transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital when her condition suddenly deteriorated,” read a pre-trial memorandum. “Thus, they further expect that the evidence will show that nothing they did or failed to do caused or contributed to the plaintiff’s alleged injuries.”
Newton-Wellesley Hospital was not a defendant in the case.
In a statement, Newton-Wellesley spokesman John Looney said the hospital “extends heartfelt sympathies to the Coelho family and we are pleased that this difficult matter has been resolved.”
“We remain confident that the caregivers at Newton-Wellesley Hospital provided high-quality and appropriate care,” he said. “Newton-Wellesley Hospital is committed to providing the highest quality care to every patient according to well-established policies and practices.”
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I'm sorry I haven't the heart for this anymore.
