Jurors have now deliberated for every week within the trial of Emanuel Lopes, charged with murdering a Weymouth Police officer and a 77-year-old bystander in 2018, and have but to achieve a verdict.
Closing arguments within the case have been heard June 28 in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham and the jury started deliberating that day. With no deliberations over the weekend and the vacation, jurors have now had the case for a complete of seven days. They have been launched at round 3 p.m. and instructed to proceed deliberations on Monday.
Lopes, 25, is accused of taking pictures Weymouth Police Sgt. Michael Chesna, 42, and bystander Vera Adams, 77, within the early hours of July 15, 2018, practically 5 years in the past. The defendant has pleaded not responsible to 11 prices in Norfolk Superior Court, together with two counts of homicide.
The protection mounted a scarcity of felony duty argument for Lopes, with protection legal professional Larry Tipton arguing that his consumer has a protracted historical past of extreme psychological sickness. In opening arguments, Tipton stated that Lopes usually “ranted” about Martians, authorities conspiracies and the Illuminati and exhibited “symptoms of voices and shadows, people that weren’t there. Paranoia.”
As Judge Beverely J. Cannone instructed jurors on the primary day of trial, “criminal responsibility” is much like an madness protection. Under Massachusetts legislation, a defendant just isn’t criminally accountable if they’ve a psychological illness or defect and because of this are unable to grasp or conform to the legislation and are despatched for therapy till they’re deemed now not mentally unwell and a risk by a decide.
In distinction, prosecutor Greg Connor stated that Lopes was wholly accountable for his actions that night time.
Those actions, as Connor described them, have been that as a substitute of dropping a big rock in his hand as instructed by Sgt. Chesna when the officer responded to the scene, Lopes as a substitute flung it at Chesna’s head, grabbed Chesna’s gun and shot a number of occasions into Chesna’s head and chest, additionally taking pictures Adams as she sat on her porch close by.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”