Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Constitutional Law Blogs -> Chris King's 1st Amendment Page

Constitutional Law

: Chris King's 1st Amendment Page

Dan Talbot murder trial 3 Feb. 2010 -- The Appellate Process and the $64,000.00 question.

By Christopher King

After yesterday's conviction Attorney Krupp vowed to bring the Appeals. So Attorneys Zabin and Krippendorf, or whomever handles the State's Appellate work will soon be busy defending their victory.

I can't imagine what the breadth of the Appeal will be, but there will obviously be a Manifest Weight of the Evidence Argument for a ton of reasons including the position of the body, the miraculously-discovered and placed bullet casings (both the 9mm and .40 cal on the Gatorade bottle), testimony of Paramedic Lee Ann Kraft that Soto told her the kid who returned, wearing a red hoodie shot Officer Talbot (KingCast hosted YouTube video). As to the procedural matters I still need to find out how Murder 2 arrived on the table and there is the procedural/substantive matter of the proffered witness Michael Racca, who was Derrick Lodie's childhood friend, as noted in this 27 Jan 2010 post. Unlike the State's witnesses who testified against Robert Iacoviello, nothing was offered to Mr. Racca, who is not a career criminal. He's finishing up his G.E.D. and studying to be a doctor's assistant or nurse I believe was his testimony. Racca said that Derek Lodie implied that he shot Officer Daniel Talbot during the telephone conversations that evening shortly after the tragedy when Lodie telephoned him.

Racca stated in the top video that Lodie told him: "[Lodie] had first related to me that the kids had a gun, we thought they were kids but we all know now that they were officers. They had flashed a gun to him at first, and that's when he said he showed them what it really meant to have a gun."

The Court asked for clarification and the proffered witness said it again, clear as a bell. He did not stammer, he did not hem and haw, and he was quite credible, and he also said that Lodie told him the officers fired first.

With that in mind, and re-thinking the Court's Decision (with which I initially agreed) I still agree that I don't see it as an excited utterance -- too much time for fabrication -- but why isn't it a Statement Against Penal Interest that could be argued for two purposes: One, to show Lodie as the shooter, and two, to show that whomever shot after the first shot from the officers fired in self-defense.

Then there is also the adjutant evidence on the Bombard case that the Court did not allow in to evidence, when Krupp alleges that Officer Talbot, dressed in plain clothes but on duty, discharged his weapon 8 times after a fleeing suspect who had his back turned. Read the Evening News and watch the videos from 26 Jan 2010 right here.

So basically Krupp will argue in addition to the Manifest Weight arguments that his client got dissed at every turn, and that cumulative effect of that is tantamount to Reversible Error, or in some fashion shows enough unlawful bias that the trial was tainted and a new one must be held. I look forward to reading the briefs from the Defense and Prosecution when they are filed, probably in late spring or early summer.

The $64,000.00 question: If a New Trial is ordered, will Robert Iacoviello, Jr. take the stand. And you can best believe a New Trial would occur, unlike the State's BS case against Derrick Gillenwater, where the State ran away on remand and I had to embarrass two prominent Boston Attorneys into paying Mr. Gillenwater for their Ineffective Assistance of Counsel (Judge Moriarty, p. one and two) which in Massachusetts is tantamount to Legal Malpractice. Google his name, I'm not getting into all of that right now. I'm sure those guys hated what I did, but all I did was exercise my First Amendment Rights to address what Harvard Law School's Citizen Media Blog deemed to be Constitutional violations against Mr. Gillenwater, thank you.

Full post as published by Chris King's 1st Amendment Page on February 03, 2010 (boomark / email).