Boston Criminal Attorney Blog

“Justice Delayed is Justice Denied” is generally speaking an accurate truism. But in some cases, not so. Legal events this past week in Falmouth District Court make clear that exception.

Thirty years ago, in January of 1980, a woman by the name of Frances Carriere was found murdered in the bathroom of her Bourne, Massachusetts home. She had been stabbed three times in the lungs and heart. From the beginning, her then-estranged husband Edmond T. Carriere, whom Frances had been separated from, had been identified by authorities as a suspect. However, Edmond Carriere had been in Florida at the time of the Massachusetts murder, and police were not able to establish sufficient evidence to charge him with involvement in his wife’s murder. In 1982, a friend of Edmond Carriere’s by the name of Richard Grebauski was indicted by a Barnstable County Grand Jury in connection with Carriere’s murder, but the charges were dropped in 1983 when Philip A. Rollins, the then-Barnstable County District Attorney, determined there was insufficient evidence to go forward with the trial. From that point until 1999, while the case remained technically open, no progress was made, and most of the previous investigators on the case had either retired or died.

Then, in 1999, a state police sergeant by the name of Paul White who was then assigned to the Massachusetts State Police cold-case squad, and a trooper by the name of Chris Mason, took up the investigation anew. In April 2000, a special Grand Jury was appointed to examine evidence in the case. In 2001, Carriere’s four adult children also hired a private investigator by the name of Terrence O’Connell to investigate their mother’s murder. All these efforts yielded new results: In 2003, two men were indicted by a Barnstable County Grand Jury for the murder of Frances Carriere: Richard Grebauski, of Wareham (the same individual who had narrowly avoided being tried for Carriere’s murder in 1982,) and a Steven Stewart of Brockton. In 2004, curiously, Richard Grebauski died in a motorcycle accident while visiting none other than Edmond Carriere in Florida.

In 2005, a Barnstable County jury convicted Steven Stewart for the murder of Frances Carriere, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. During Stewart's 2005 trial, witnesses testified that during a card game, Carriere offered them money to kill his wife. At that trial, there was additional testimony that Carriere allegedly paid Richard Grebauski $10,000 for the killing. Grebauski was alleged to have then paid Stewart $5000 of that money to join him in the murder. With Stewart’s conviction, justice seemed to have been done.

However, in 2009, on appeal the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned Stewart’s conviction and ordered a new trial, ruling that a witness at Stewart’s earlier trial was improperly questioned by the prosecution. Stewart’s new trial was scheduled to begin in a few weeks, when the Barnstable County District Attorney’s Office was faced with a Hobson’s Choice: Take the risk that without the prior witness (at Stewart’s 2005 trial) being available for testimony, Stewart might receive an acquittal at the new trial - or “do a deal with the devil”: Strike some acceptable plea bargain with Stewart (one of the two men who actually committed the murder,) in exchange for his testimony implicating Edmond Carriere.

That’s one tough choice, legally and morally: What to do? Risk that both men remain free, or find some small satisfaction that Stewart had already served seven years for Frances Carriere’s death, and secure a way to convict the man that almost all investigators believed was the master planner of this murder – Edmond Carriere? District Attorney Michael O’Keefe made the deal: Instead of re-trying Stewart on a charge of murder one, he would allowed Stewart to plea guilty to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter, with a joint recommendation (i.e., agreed to by both the prosecution and Stewart’s defense attorney,) that Stewart’s sentence be reduced to time already served (seven years.) Again, not an easy choice. But life isn’t about easy choices – especially life as a prosecutor or criminal defense attorney.

Yet all four of Carriere’s four adult children celebrated this decision and the indictment of Edmond Carriere. "This has been a long time in coming," said Linda McCraney, one of the Carriere's four children, who now lives in Florida. "I can't tell you how happy this makes me. None of us — my sisters, my brother, my aunt or me, would be in this position now if not for what my father did to my mother 30 years ago. Our lives were changed in ways that no one could have expected.” Over the years, the Carriere children have maintained that their father believed that his wife would be awarded their house if their divorce proceedings that were underway at the time, continued forward. They’ve stated that their father was convinced that their parents’ home would substantially increase in value because of state highway plans in 1980 to extend Route 25 directly to the Bourne Bridge and to develop a new rotary near the exit ramp in Buzzards Bay, and he didn’t want to lose the house to his wife in divorce proceedings.. (Prior to these highway changes, traffic to the Bourne Bridge had to pass through Wareham and the center of Buzzards Bay.)

As a Boston criminal defense lawyer, it’s my professional obligation to presume a defendant innocent. But I can say that when four adult children literally celebrate the arrest and indictment of their own father for their mother’s murder, (coupled with all the other evidence in this case,) little more need be said.

From the day this murder occurred, Edmond Carriere has long been a suspect in this case, by seemingly everyone involved in it over thirty years’ time. It seems now that, in this case at least, justice delayed may not be justice denied. This trial will be interesting to follow.

I often get questions from readers and friends as to exactly what the charge of “resisting arrest” means. I’ve represented many clients on this charge (successfully, avoiding many convictions,) and I can assure you that this area of criminal law can be extremely murky.

The very term “resisting arrest” is a vague one. Exactly what does that mean? Obviously, an act such as physically fighting with a police officer who is attempting to make an arrest would clearly qualify as “resisting.” But assume for a moment that a person were to do something as non-combative as take a step or two back from an officer who was attempting to make an arrest of that person. Would that constitute “resisting” arrest? What about walking away from the officer? What about running away? In my career as a Boston criminal defense lawyer, I’ve seen dozens of scenarios where clients are charged with “resisting arrest.” Some of those charges were justified; many were not.

Essentially, this area of law boils down to a police officer’s power to make an arrest. Depending on the particulars of every given situation, (which are always fact-driven) those powers can be very broad. It is the wide breadth of those powers that can lead to abuses by some police officers. Bear in mind: My writings are not intended to criticize police officers in general, or particular police departments within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The vast majority of police officers are responsible stewards of their authority, and I have great respect and appreciation for a great many of them. But, as is the truth with any occupation or profession, there are always some individuals who abuse their power and positions of authority. That is one reason why criminal courts exist.

A perfect example of such an abuse occurred with a recent client of mine: Waiting in line to get into a Boston nightclub, the client was told by a police officer on a paid detail (i.e., the officer’s shift was paid for by the nightclub,) to leave the waiting line, simply because he had asked to step inside for a moment to alert his friends, who were unaware where he was, that he was waiting in the line outside the club. This very aggressive officer told the client that if he didn’t leave, he’d be arrested. As the officer threatened him with arrest, the client backed away from him, and the officer charged him with “resisting arrest.” While I was successful in preventing this client from receiving a conviction, the police department involved pressed their case aggressively with the District Attorney’s office involved.

Recently, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) provided some clarification as to what kind of conduct does and does not legally constitute “resisting arrest”. In my opinion as a Norfolk County criminal defense lawyer, the decision doesn’t provide all the clarity it could have, but it’s an improvement. The ruling, in Commonwealth v. Quintos Q, a Juvenile SJC No. 10517 (decided June 21 2010,) held that a suspect who runs away from police after being ordered to “stop”, cannot be charged with resisting arrest for solely those actions and those actions only. In contrast, however, the SJC also ruled that a fleeing suspect who puts officers' lives in danger in the process of pursuing him, can be charged with this crime.

Commonwealth v. Quintos Q involved the June 2006 arrest of a juvenile who fled Stoneham police after officers shouted “stop”, during an on-foot pursuit that followed a car chase. The defendant was arrested, when he ran down a dead end street. When being arrested, the defendant was not combative with the officers and submitted to their custody. The court ruled that "In the circumstances here, a passenger in the vehicle, innocent of any crime, could not reasonably be said to understand the pursuit and the words, ‘Stop, police,' to mean more than simply an order to stop.” In the second case, Commonwealth v. Montoya SJC No. 10526 (also decided June 21 2010,) the court ruled that police were legally justified in charging this defendant with resisting arrest, and based its reasoning in the fact that the defendant supposedly placed officers’ in danger in the process of fleeing. This arrest occurred in Holyoke in 2005, as police officers pursued a shooting suspect who fled the scene on a bicycle. With guns drawn, police ordered the defendant, who they suspected had just committed the shooting, to stop. The defendant then abandoned the bike and fled on foot. He then ran through an opening in a fence and jumped 20 to 25 feet into the water of a canal below. The officers stopped their pursuit before reaching the fence, but the defendant was arrested later. The defendant’s lawyers argued that he should be acquitted on the resisting arrest charge, because it was the officers who placed themselves in danger by chasing the defendant, but the SJC disagreed.

As a Dedham resisting arrest lawyer, I find the reasoning between these two cases to be rather amorphous. It could be argued that anyone who flees from police, is triggering a pursuit (whether vehicular or on foot,) that could expose an officer to danger. Exactly where are lower courts to draw the line in deciding when and where a police officer is and isn’t placed in “danger”, when pursing a suspect? If someone flees police by running across a street that has little vehicular traffic on it, that would seem to preclude a charge of “resisting arrest; if that same suspect were to run across a street with minor to modest traffic, would that then legally constitute resisting arrest? Where is the limiting principle, grounded in pragmatism? This decision seems to create more confusion than clarity.

Keep reading this blog: I'll keep an eye on this evolving area of criminal law.