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Purported site of a gun waiving incident
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While no great surprise to the ever-growing legions of loyal Quincy Quarry News readers, the latest wave of crimes still does not fail to depress.
This week got off to a bad start on Sunday morning when Quincy Quarry’s senior Citizen Police Scanner Monitor heard word of a purported gunman threatening employees at the CVS Pharmacy on Southern Artery.
Fortunately, nothing bad happened.
Hell yes, I’ll sign the petitions
Image via Canva
Other than surely rattling CVS employees that is.
Speaking of armed robbery, while the plucky new local grassroots group that launched a petition to vacate Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch’s grifting himself with an 89% pay raise on a pension calculation basis wss able to extend their signature collection drive by two days than originally expected, they fell short of collecting the all but assuredly preemptive statutory high bar to have to collect 8,000 signatures within but 20 days.
Even so, they were able to collect close to 6,000 signatures protesting the mayor’s fat raise and such surely has to make nervous the tools on stools on the Quincy City Council who rubber stamped the porcine raise for the mayor as well as porky 49% raises for themselves.
After all, the 2025 city council elections are approaching faster than they would care to have to admit.
“Remember those pay raise votes in 2024 …”
An old picture
Then again, surely local voters will have forgotten it all by then …
Speaking of crime, word came out that the jury members in the Karen Read homicide trial were in agreement that she was not guilty of Murder in the Second Degree nor guilty of leaving the scene of an accident and were only deadlocked on the charge of vehicular manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence.
Decisions that were never addressed by Judge Beverly Cannone during the jury’s deliberations.
Instead, rather than press the jury to continue to endeavor to reach a verdict on the remaining charge after but arguably modest deliberations following a two month’s long trial, the judge instead declared a mistrial on all counts even though the jury has decided not guilty on two counts, including the most serious charge.
Don’t mess with Eliot
Image via Desilu Productions
In turn, all but immediately thereafter, Norfolk County District Attorney and longtime Quincy resident Michael Morrissey announced that he intends to pursue a retrial on all counts.
So what, apparently, for the fact that federal law enforcement has undertaken the looking to be all but assuredly unprecedented step of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on expert witnesses in support of a defendant accused of killing a police officer.
That and how the feds have also worn out a lot of shoe leather to leas them to conclusion that the defendant did not kill the cop as alleged.
Cutie and the Beast
Conjoined images
Further, good luck for both the judge and the prosecution on multiple motion complaints filed by the defense as regards the recently completed trial, much less scoring any convictions via a retrial given merely the recent suspension without pay of Michael Proctor, the lead Massachusetts State Trooper investigator on the case, and who is likely be fired for cause by the time a new trial might actually happen.
Fortunately, on a bright note, a statehouse bill to allow a return of Happy Hour in Massachusetts received a favorable vote on Thursday.
“This beer’s for you!”
A Quincy Quarry News staff member photo
While happy days are not yet here again, at least there is some hope that at least Happy Hour might return.
Even if not, however, soon enough.
Not even close to soon enough even though the break room at Quincy Quarry News’ headquarters features an ample assortment of adult libations along with both a K-Cup machine and an espresso maker.
After all, such amenities are necessary what with the relentlessness of the crush of local news to address.
There is no way Judge Cannone will accept those motions. Prosecution shouldn’t argue over the motions because they have a better chance of conviction for manslaughter, over 2nd degree and leaving the scene. I am a firm believer that Karen Read didn’t intentionally harm Officer John O’Keefe but I do believe she accidentally hit him.
Folk,
A few points.
One, a number of the motions were submitted to the Appellate Court challenging various of Judge Cannone’s calls along the way and thus rulings on same will not be her call.
Also note that there remains the problem that the findings of world class independent experts retained by the FBI SUPPORT the innocence of a defendant charged with a cop killing — when was the last time that has happened? — as the experts testified that no way does the condition of Ms. Read’s ride nor do the nature of Mr. O’Keefe’s injuries line up with the prosecution’s case, not to mention that the state’s forensic witnesses re same variously conceded problems with their own reads of things.
About the only unknown on this aspect of things will be if a retrial jury will be allowed to be told that the FBI’s experts were independently retained by the FBI, unlike was the case in the recent trial when no such attribution was allowed.
Next, given the high profile of the case, it will be virtually impossible to empanel a new jury that will opt to convict. Just State Police Trooper Proctor’s myriad of inappropriate side behavior alone will doom his testimony in a retrial.
In turn, how does the DA secure a guilty verdict with the lead investigator thoroughly discredited as well as likely by the time of a potential retrial fired over his actions?
Also expect more shoes to drop — and probably a lot of shoes — on the prosecution as well as perhaps also on various others not named Read.
Reality, the DA had nothing and will have even less given a retrial.
Finally, with all due respect, you are opting for a middle ground compromise view when in point of fact the charges are binary — meaning either she did as charged or she did not. Given all manner of massive reasonable doubts, a guilty verdict on most any charges is thus all put impossible — not even for just drunk driving.
Not viable charges against Ms. Read anyway.
No one secured the crime scene. End of story. It doesn’t matter if she is guilty or not, the crime scene was trampled.