Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Michael M. O'Laughlin was convicted of the assault and attempted murder of Annmarie Kotowski, a woman who lived in his apartment building.  The victim was severely beaten to the extent that, except for her jaw, all the bones in her face were broken.  In addition one of her ears was almost completely severed.  At trial the state presented “evidence of motive, means, opportunity, and consciousness of guilt” on the part of O'Laughlin.  However, such evidence only indicated that O'Laughlin could have committed the crime.  It contained no necessary inferences that he did commit the crime.

The victim had lived with her husband, David Kotowski, for 26 years, but had separated from him just 2 months before the assault to pursue a relationship with another man, James Finn.  She had mentioned divorce to her husband just one week before the assault.  She had amnesia resulting from the assault and could not identify her assailant.  The brutality of the assault suggested the assailant knew her enough to harbor rage towards her.  O'Laughlin's alleged motive of robbery did not require such brutality and did not make much sense as nothing was stolen from the victim's apartment.

The trial judge refused to allow into evidence a note found in the victim's apartment.  The note called its recipient “a whore,” used four-letter words to describe her having oral and regular sex with “him,” and contained the words, “threat to kill him,” suggesting murderous rage.  The victim's relationships highly suggest that her husband had written the note to her and that the “him” mentioned in the note was her boyfriend, James Finn.  Police had not used comparisons of handwriting to prove who wrote the note, and one reason citied for its inadmissibility was that allowing it into evidence “would have required the jury to speculate as to its meaning and genesis.”

The victim's husband was known to have blisters on his hands when questioned after the assault.  He had two towels reeking of bleach in the trunk of his car.  These suggested that he engaged in a cleanup.  He also had no alibi for the hours surrounding the 2 a.m. assault, claiming to be home asleep at the time.

On appeal, the Massachusetts Appellate Court ruled in 2005 that the state's evidence was insufficient to establish guilt.  It then vacated O'Laughlin's conviction and entered a verdict of acquittal.  The prosecution appealed the decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which in 2006 reversed the appellate court's decision that the state's evidence was insufficient.  The Court did indicate the decision was a close one, but it reinstated O'Laughlin's conviction.  In 2009, the First Circuit Federal Court reversed the decision of the MSJC, after finding the evidence insufficient to convict.  In 2010, O'Laughlin was freed from prison after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the prosecution's appeal.  (www.freemichaelnow.com)  [3/08]

Christina Martin was convicted of murdering her boyfriend, Richard Alfredo, 61.  Alfredo died in his home after a long history of heart disease.  Initially, it was assumed the disease was the cause of his death and no autopsy was performed.  Alfredo's assets worth about $25,000 went to his estranged wife and her children while Martin and her children continued to live in the home she had shared with Alfredo.  Four weeks after Alfredo's death, rumors surfaced that Alfredo was poisoned.  Martin's daughter had told high school friends that Alfredo had made sexual advances toward her, and that her mother got revenge by serving him Jell-O laced with LSD.

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While traveling from Boston to New York, Dominic Daley, 34, and James Halligan, 27, both Irish immigrants, were arrested on Nov. 12, 1805 for the murder of farmer Marcus Lyon.  Lyon's horse was found wandering three days earlier and his murdered body was found two days earlier in Wilbraham.  Wilbraham was then located in Hampshire County.  The defendants were incarcerated in Northampton while their captor received a $500 reward.

At trial, the main evidence against the defendants was the testimony of 13-year-old Laertes Fuller who said he saw the pair on the road, then saw them again minutes later with the victim's horse.  It is not clear why the defendants would have the victim's horse as the horse was later seen wandering around freely.  Legally, witnesses were required to be 14 years old to testify, but the judge overrode this rule in Fuller's case.  Fuller's testimony suggested the defendants killed Lyon during the interval between his sightings of the defendants.  However, Lyon had been shot and, when questioned, Fuller reported he did not hear a gunshot, even though he could not have been very far from the murder.

There appears to be reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendants because:  (1) Fuller was at best marginally qualified to testify.  (2) The details of his testimony contained nothing that compelled one to believe its accuracy.  (3) The reward offered created an incentive for perjury.  (4) Even if Fuller's testimony was true, it did not definitively establish that the defendants had murdered Lyon.  Besides the lack of credible prosecution evidence, there was a lack of due process because the defendants were not allowed to testify in their own defense and were only assigned a lawyer two days before trial.

The defendants were convicted and sentenced to death.  Both were hanged on June 5, 1806 in Northampton before a crowd of 15,000.  It was alleged and widely accepted in the 20th century that Daley and Halligan were framed and convicted because they were Irish Catholics, but historical records do not support any overt prejudice.  In 1984, Gov. Dukakis issued a proclamation exonerating the two.  (BUSL) (Resources)  [11/09]

Stearns Kimball Abbott was sentenced to death for the murder of Maria L. Crue.  The victim was shot to death in her farm home near Groton, MA.  A sleigh belonging to 16-year-old Jennie Carr was identified as being present at Crue's home on the day of the murder.  Carr said she had stopped to visit Mrs. Crue but had left when a man appeared at the door and said she was away.  Other witnesses recalled seeing a stranger with a scruffy beard and a mustache in the vicinity.  This stranger had stopped at a furniture factory not far from the Crue home, asked for a job, and given his name as Stearns Kimball Abbott.  He was a 40-year-old transient from Cambridgeport who had been in and out of prison for for burglary, horse theft, and forgery.

When Abbott was brought to trial, Carr identified him as the man she saw at the victim's house.  Abbott was convicted after his lawyers failed to locate any witnesses who could have established that he had boarded a Boston-bound train at Littleton more than an hour before the victim was last seen alive.  Abbott's appeal was denied in Feb. 1881, and his hanging was scheduled for the following April.  Soon after the appeal denial, a young factory girl in Lowell claimed that Carr had acknowledged that she had falsely accused Abbott.  A few weeks later, that girl's body was found in the Charles River, turning public opinion, according to the Boston Daily Globe, “strong against the verdict” in Abbott's case.

Shortly before Abbott's scheduled hanging, Massachusetts Governor Long granted a reprieve until June and appointed a council to reinvestigate the case.  After being called to testify, Carr initially denied rumors that she had been intimate with the victim's husband, Joseph Crue, and that she had given birth to a child.  However, after a physician who attended the delivery of her child testified, Carr acknowledged that she and the victim's husband had been romantically involved at the time of the murder, and that she had given birth to his child.  Following this hearing, Governor Long refused to declare Abbott innocent, but commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.  However, in 1911, more than thirty-one years after Abbott's arrest, Massachusetts Governor Foss granted Abbott a complete pardon and ordered his release from custody.  (CWC)  [4/09]

Kenneth Waters was convicted of the murder of Katharina Brow.  She was stabbed more than 30 times and her money and jewelry were taken.  Two of Waters' ex-girlfriends testified that he had made a drunken confession to them.  Another witness stated Waters tried to sell her the victim's ring and necklace soon after the crime.  Co-workers of Waters stated that he had a knife similar to the one used in the attack.  Types B and O blood were found at the scene.  Brow had type B and Waters had type O, although 48% of the population have type O.

Although the perpetrator apparently bled at the crime scene, police examined Waters a few hours after the murder and found no injuries on him.  Waters' defense indicated that a hair found on victim was neither the victim's nor Waters'.  An ex-girlfriend witness later recanted her testimony.  DNA tests exonerated Waters in 2001.  A theatrical movie based on the case and entitled Conviction is due to be released in Oct. 2010.  (BUSL) (IP)  [6/05]

Benjamin LaGuer was convicted of raping 59-year-old Lennice Plante.  Plante had bad eyesight and said she could not identify her assailant.  When questioned further she vaguely described him as a very dark skinned black male who was very short and of small build.  She later identified LaGuer from a photo.  LaGuer has a light olive skin complexion, is at least six inches taller than Plante and is of muscular build.  Plante said her assailant spoke clearly without an accent, yet LaGuer had had a severe stutter since childhood, and also has an ethnic accent.  Plante said she was vaginally and anally raped over an 8-hour period, yet tests of vaginal and rectal swabs taken from her, as well as tests on her panties failed to show the presence of semen.

Plante had a nervous breakdown 14-years before the incident and her daughter said she “had not been right” since the breakdown.  The prosecutor thought she was mentally ill.  Given her mental state and the lack of semen evidence, it is not clear that she was ever raped.  Other problems plague the case including fingerprint evidence, blood evidence, a missing knife, a missing Pepsi can, police misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, and even juror misconduct.  Following LaGuer's conviction, some jurors on the all-white jury came forward and said that during deliberations other jurors made prejudicial ethnic statements against LaGuer.  (JD33 p14)  [3/07]