Karen Learn’s staff needs to look into Norfolk DA Michael Morrissey’s private e mail and cellphone for any references to their consumer’s case, saying they’ve proof he’s been making improper communications with the court docket and witnesses.
“As grounds for this motion, recent reporting, corroborated by documentary evidence, demonstrates that DA Morrissey used his personal email address to communicate ex parte with Stoughton District Court personnel and judges,” the movement filed by Learn attorneys David Yannetti, Alan Jackson and Elizabeth Little states.
It was one among six whole paperwork filed on Friday morning in the case that resulted in mistrial earlier this yr and through which the scope of the subsequent trial is hotly contested. Learn can be the goal of a civil case by the household of her alleged homicide sufferer, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, which was not too long ago ordered to carry off till after the legal trial is over.
The argument follows a submitting final month by Mark Bederow for Holden-based blogger Aidan Kearney, who has extensively lined the Learn case on his blogs and social media accounts underneath the “Turtleboy” title from an intensely pro-Learn perspective and has been charged with intimidating witnesses in Learn’s case for her profit.
Bederow’s letter, the brand new submitting states, claimed that Morrissey used his private e mail deal with to chastise the Stoughton District Courtroom for “leaking” details about a public continuing in opposition to Kearney to the defendant and that his communications included screenshots of imessages from a pro-prosecution witness in Learn’s case, in addition to different info indicating multiple witness was in communication with the DA’s workplace.
“The Commonwealth has … acknowledged that it is in receipt of statements from ‘a number of witnesses in this matter,’ which were apparently withheld from the defense,” the brand new submitting states.
The remainder of the nine-page submitting stresses that by regulation prosecutors, together with the DA himself, are required to offer all discovery to the protection which incorporates, quoting related state regulation: “[m]aterial and relevant police reports, photographs, tangible objects, all intended exhibits, reports of physical examinations of any person or scientific tests or experiments, and statements of persons the party intends to call as witnesses.”
They additional argue that such disclosures can’t be legally shielded by way of private communications versus official ones, as they allege Morrissey has finished right here.
Lack of ‘basic’ understanding
In a separate submitting, the protection claims that the prosecution’s new forensics professional, Shanon R. Burgess, misunderstands some primary ideas — together with the distinction between megabits and megabytes — in his evaluation of the extraction of the info from the infotainment system of Learn’s Lexus, which prosecutors say was her device to kill O’Keefe.
Learn’s attorneys are principally arguing that the primary “chip-off” evaluation did the truth is extract the whole contents of the automotive’s system primarily based on the storage capability specs and that the prosecution’s new professional erred when he mentioned that extra was to be gained as a result of he misunderstood the specs to be both megabytes or gigabytes versus what they had been: the far smaller megabits and gigabits.
The prosecution’s request for a doubtlessly harmful “chip-on” evaluation is thus made with defective logic, the protection argues, and if they’re to undergo with it then the protection needs their very own professional current through the process.
Open the sidebars
Learn’s staff says they will’t “properly prepare for trial” except the court docket releases the transcripts of the sidebar conversations held throughout and earlier than the trial.
“Without access to transcripts of the sidebar conferences, which remain impounded as of this date, we are unable to properly prepare and litigate the anticipated motions in limine,” Learn lawyer David Yannetti wrote in a supporting affidavit.”
Prosecutions filed a movement to impound all sidebar conferences on April 10, forward of the trial begin date of April 29. The rationale on the time was that to publish“matters discussed at sidebar, including juror names, information and potentially sensitive responses to inquiry, while trial is ongoing could prejudice the parties and expose jurors to extraneous matters.”
The protection request doesn’t ask for the transcripts that embrace juror names, however “instead seeks only the release of the sidebar discussions that took place during trial, and those that addressed evidentiary rulings prior to trial.”
The Learn case
Learn, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree homicide (Depend 1), motorcar manslaughter whereas working underneath the affect (Depend 2), and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting demise (Depend 3) within the killing of her boyfriend of roughly two years, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, within the early morning of Jan. 29, 2022.
Prosecutors say that she struck O’Keefe along with her SUV after one more drunken bout of combating within the troubled relationship and left him to freeze and die on the entrance yard of a Canton residence the place the pair had been imagined to proceed an evening out after the bars closed.
The protection counters that O’Keefe made it inside that residence and was killed by others inside, together with probably then-homeowner Brian Albert, who was a fellow Boston Police officer. The well-connected police household then labored with native and state police investigators to cowl up the crime and body Learn, the protection staff says.
A trial held earlier this yr ended with a hung jury. Not lengthy after Norfolk Superior Courtroom Choose Beverly J. Cannone declared a mistrial, Learn’s protection staff filed a movement to have Counts 1 and three tossed within the subsequent trial as a result of a number of jurors, they mentioned, had come ahead to say they had been unanimously able to acquit Learn on these counts and had been solely held on Depend 2 however didn’t know learn how to point out that.
Cannone denied the movement so the protection staff took it to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Courtroom the place either side argued their circumstances and answered questions throughout oral arguments earlier than all seven justices on Wednesday.
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