Tag Archives: Massachusetts

Trial opens for American in Islamic State-linked police beheading plot

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – A Massachusetts man charged with plotting to behead police officers in an effort to help Islamic State was due in court on Wednesday for the start of his trial on charges including conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.

Federal prosecutors charge that the man, David Daoud Wright, along with his uncle and a friend, had first plotted to kill the woman who organized a 2015 “Draw Mohammed” contest in Garland, Texas. But they contend Wright’s uncle, Usamaah Abdullah Rahim, lost patience and in June 2015 told Wright and the third man that he instead planned to kill police officers.

Law enforcement had been monitoring communications between the three and overheard the threat, prosecutors said. When police approached Rahim in a Boston supermarket parking lot to question him, he drew a large knife and officers shot him dead.

Police later arrested Wright, who lived in the Boston suburb of Everett, and a third conspirator, Nicholas Rovinski. Wright has denied all wrongdoing. Rovinski last year pleaded guilty to two criminal counts of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

If Wright is found guilty of the charge of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, he could face a life sentence. He is also charged with conspiracy to support a terrorist organization and obstruction of justice, allegedly for telling Rahim to destroy his phone before attacking police, as well as for attempting to destroy all information on his computer.

Prosecutors said the men initially wanted to behead New York resident Pamela Geller, who had organized the Texas event in May highlighting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, images that many Muslims consider blasphemous. Two gunmen had attacked that event, and were shot dead by police.

Geller contends her event was intended as a demonstration of the free-speech rights protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Rahim’s family have denied he had shown any signs of radicalization.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Tom Brown)

Suspicious truck prompts evacuations at Massachusetts Air Force base

BOSTON (Reuters) – Massachusetts State Police said on Thursday they were investigating a suspicious truck stopped at the gates of Hanscom Air Force Base after an initial screening of the vehicle indicated signs of possibly hazardous material.

Parts of the base were evacuated but no injuries were reported, base officials said in a statement. The incident began at about 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) when base security became concerned about the truck at a gate during a routine inspection.

The State Police bomb squad and a State Police helicopter went to the scene at the base, located about 15 miles (24 km)northwest of Boston.

About 10,000 people, including military staff and civilians, work at the 846-acre (342-hectare) site in Bedford, Massachusetts, which is home to units overseeing acquisitions, cyber security and some nuclear operations.

Live aerial footage showed a large truck with “BigFoot Moving & Storage” emblazoned on the side stopped near the base’s gate with an armored military vehicle parked nearby. Police said they had set up a 1,500-foot (457-meter) perimeter around the truck. ”

A person who answered the phone at the moving company and declined to give her name said that she was aware of the truck’s presence at the base but had no details as to what was in it.

The nearby L.G. Hanscom Field airport, which caters to small planes, remained open, the Bedford Police Department said on Twitter.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Gabriella Borter)

Taxi hits pedestrians near Boston airport, at least 10 hurt

A Massachusetts State Police officer walks past the scene where a taxi cab crashed into a group of bystanders at the taxi pool at Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., July 3, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) – A taxi plowed into a group of pedestrians near the taxi pool serving Boston’s Logan International Airport on Monday, sending at least 10 people to hospitals with injuries, authorities said, adding that it appeared to be an accident.

“At this preliminary point in the investigation, there is no information that suggests the crash was intentional,” the Massachusetts State Police said in a statement.

Local media, citing unnamed sources, said the taxi driver may have hit the gas instead of the brake pedal. Police said they were interviewing the driver, a 56-year-old man from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Boston police officers, as well as fire and emergency services personnel, were on the scene of the crash, which occurred in the city’s East Boston section, the Massachusetts State Police said in a Twitter post.

“Preliminary reports indicate several pedestrians with injuries, varying severity,” the police said.

At least 10 people were taken to hospitals after the crash, Boston Emergency Medical Services said in a Twitter message.

Video footage on CNN showed what appeared to be a taxi, with its front hood buckled, resting next to a building.

The people who were hit were on a patio next to the parking lot where dozens of taxis were parked, WCVB-TV reported.

(Reporting By Gina Cherelus in New York and Bernie Woodall in Detroit; Additional reporting by Daniel Wallis in New York, Tim Ahmann in Washington; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)

Jury quirk in U.S. meningitis outbreak case could bring stiffer sentence

FILE PHOTO: Barry Cadden, the former president of New England Compounding Center, exits the federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., March 22, 2017. REUTERS/Nate Raymond/File Photo

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Prosecutors on Monday said a quirk in the trial verdict of a Massachusetts pharmacist cleared of murder for selling fungus-ridden steroids that killed 64 people in 2012 meant that a judge could still consider the murder allegations at his sentencing.

A federal jury in March found Barry Cadden, the co-founder and ex-president of New England Compounding Center, guilty on racketeering and fraud counts but cleared him of the most serious charges, second-degree murder, for his role in a meningitis outbreak that sickened 753 people in 20 states, killing 64.

But when the 12 jurors filled out their verdict slip, rather than just checking findings of “guilty” or “not guilty,” they filled in numbers that prosecutors now say reflected vote counts showing a majority found Cadden guilty on 21 of 25 murder counts.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Massachusetts argued in a motion filed on Monday that the verdict form showed jurors believed Cadden was guilty of murder and want the judge to consider that fact in determining his sentence on June 26.

Former prosecutors said they had never seen a verdict slip quite like it.

“While they failed to reach unanimity on these racketeering acts, the jury’s verdict confirmed that the murder racketeering acts were proven by a preponderance of the evidence in this case, and can be properly considered at sentencing,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Their argument might work since judges at sentencing can consider conduct proven by a standard lower than what jurors are instructed to follow to convict someone, said David Schumacher, former deputy chief of the health care fraud unit of the U.S. Attorney’s office.

“They have a very good argument,” he said. “They actually have documentary evidence prosecutors never have in criminal cases.”

A conviction on any of the 25 acts of second-degree murder Cadden faced under a racketeering law could have exposed him to life in prison. He could still face decades behind bars.

A lawyer for Cadden did not respond to a request for comment. In court papers, his lawyers have disputed that the jury did not clearly acquit him and said prosecution claims to the contrary were “wishful thinking.”

Cadden, 50, was one of only two out of 14 people indicted in 2014 connected to the scandal at the Framingham, Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center to face murder charges. The other murder defendant, former supervisory pharmacist Glenn Chin, is scheduled go on trial on Sept. 19. He has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors said that in 2012, the compounding pharmacy sent out 17,600 vials of steroids labeled sterile that were contaminated with mold to 23 states and that Cadden ignored the rules and put profits before patients. Cadden denied wrongdoing.

(Adds missing word “care” to 7th paragraph.)

(Reporting by Nate Raymond; editing by Scott Malone and Tom Brown)

Massachusetts heroin trade crackdown leads to 30 arrests

A used needle sits on the ground in a park in Lawrence, Massachusetts, U.S., May 30, 2017, where individuals were arrested earlier in the day during raids to break up heroin and fentanyl drug rings in the region, according to law enforcement officials. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

BOSTON (Reuters) – A crackdown on Massachusetts’ heroin trade led to the arrests of 30 people on Tuesday on charges they were running a drug-trafficking ring that law enforcement officials said was one of the largest they had ever seen in the state.

Authorities said 27 people were arrested in early-morning raids around Lawrence and charged with running a ring that dealt heroin, cocaine and the deadly painkiller fentanyl in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Three people already had been in custody.

About 200 federal, state and local law enforcement officials were involved in the sweep, which authorities dubbed Operation Bad Company, following an investigation that began in April 2016. The operation included phones taps in a house in Lawrence that served as the ring’s “stash house,” according to court papers unsealed on Tuesday.

Lawrence, a former mill town, is about 30 miles north of Boston near the New Hampshire border.

The alleged leaders of the ring, Juan Anibal Patrone, 26, and Josuel Moises Patrone-Gonzalez, 22, are dual citizens of the Dominican Republic and Italy, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Massachusetts. It was not immediately clear whether either of the two had hired an attorney.

A spike in U.S. overdose deaths linked to heroin, fentanyl and other opioid drugs has prompted a national crackdown on the trade by U.S. law enforcement. Heroin-related overdose deaths quadrupled from 2010 to 2015, when they hit 13,000, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Trott)

Massachusetts challenges immigration detention in state court

A demonstrator holds a sign during a rally at the City College of New York (CCNY) to protest the immigration and deportation policies of the U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., March 9, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – The state of Massachusetts on Tuesday asked its top court to find that state authorities lack the authority to detain illegal immigrants who come in contact with the legal system to buy time for federal authorities to take them into custody.

The hearing amounted to a challenge to requests by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency for courts and law enforcement agencies to keep illegal immigrants facing civil deportation orders in custody for up to 48 hours after their cases are resolved, a practice expected to step up under the administration of President Donald Trump.

The state argued that keeping someone in custody after his or her case is resolved amounted to a fresh arrest of the person without sufficient legal justification.

“Probable cause for civil removability is simply not a basis for arrest under Massachusetts law,” Jessica Barnett, an assistant state attorney general told the court. She noted that state law does not specifically give law enforcement agencies the power to arrest people facing civil deportation proceedings.

The U.S. Justice Department argued the detainer requests reflect basic practices of cooperation between various law enforcement agencies.

“From our perspective, all states have an inherent authority to police their sovereignty,” said Joshua Press, the lawyer representing the Justice Department.

The case was sparked by the arrest last year of Sreynuon Lunn, a man who Press said entered the United States as a refugee in 1985 and was ordered deported to Cambodia in 2008 after a series of criminal convictions.

Cambodia had declined to accept him and he was released. He was arrested in Boston on an unarmed robbery charge and ordered released in February after prosecutors failed to present a case. While he was waiting to be let out from his court holding cell, federal ICE officials took him into custody.

As a practical matter, his arrest by ICE makes the case moot but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court agreed to take the case on premise that cooperation between law enforcement in the state and ICE would come up again.

Trump has made immigration enforcement a centerpiece of his presidency, vowing to wall off the Mexican border, deport an estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the country and cut off Justice Department grants to cities that fail to help U.S. immigration authorities.

Attorneys for Lunn and the state largely agreed on the matter, with both sides contending that state agencies lacked authority to comply with the ICE detainer requests. But Lunn’s attorneys went further, arguing that the detainer process violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of due process because judges are not involved in issuing them.

“There is no fixing the constitutional problems here,” said Emma Winger, a public defense attorney representing Lunn.

Lunn’s attorneys have declined to answer questions about the status of the deportation case. The court did not immediately rule on the matter.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Marguerita Choy)

Massachusetts judge considers right-to-die lawsuit

Retired Massachusetts physician Roger Kligler, a plaintiff in a right-to-die lawsuit, speaks to reporters outside a courtroom in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., March 8, 2017. REUTERS/Nate Raymond

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Two Massachusetts doctors urged a judge on Wednesday to let them proceed with a lawsuit seeking an order that the state’s murder and manslaughter laws do not apply to physicians who offer lethal medications to terminally ill patients.

During arguments before Superior Court Judge Mary Ames in Boston, a lawyer for the doctors, one of whom is suffering from cancer, said a cloud of uncertainty was preventing physicians from providing such medications.

“Medical aid-in-dying is simply not covered by the Commonwealth’s manslaughter and murder laws,” lawyer John Kappos said.

He made the arguments on behalf of Roger Kligler, a retired doctor diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer, and Alan Steinbach, a physician who says he is willing to write prescriptions for lethal medication but fears prosecution.

Assistant Attorney General Robert Quinan said that while Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey extended her “utmost sympathy” to Kligler, no grounds existed to grant the ruling he sought.

Quinan argued the court should defer to the state legislature to decide the issue and ensure safeguards are enacted to protect vulnerable patients and the integrity of the medical community.

“Only a deliberative body can implement the appropriate safeguards,” he said.

Ames made no ruling on whether to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in October, following two hours of arguments. She called the issues “important” and said the case was headed to a higher court no matter how she ruled.

“These are probably issues very much on the mind of anyone with family members facing very serious disease and mortality,” Ames said.

The lawsuit is being pursued by nonprofit right-to-die organization Compassion & Choices.

According to the group, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana, California and Colorado and the District of Columbia allow medical aid-in-dying, with all but one of the states taking the action as a result of legislation or ballot initiatives.

The Massachusetts legislature has considered, but never enacted, similar legislation. In 2012, voters narrowly defeated a ballot initiative that would have legalized the practice.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney)

New England shivers under blanket of snow at onset of spring

BOSTON (Reuters) – Residents of much of coastal New England woke up on the second day of spring to discover lawns and roads blanketed with snow and schools closed in Boston, Providence and several other cities.

But the last gasp of winter, forecast to drop as much as 6 inches of snow on Boston, was expected to be brief, with temperatures expected to rise to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit by the afternoon.

The snowfall, which followed several days of seasonable warmth, left some Bostonians puzzled about clothing choices, with pedestrians taking to the streets in shorts and sneakers despite the short lived storm.

“It’s going to compact quickly and also melt. We are expecting temperatures this afternoon to rise into the upper 30s to mid 40s across southern New England, so that’ll promote melting,” said Kim Buttrick, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Massachusetts. “This is all going to pass.”

The forecast for the storm had been erratic over the weekend, swinging from predicting as much as 10 inches of snow in Boston to the possibility of the storm tracking east over the ocean and missing the city entirely.

“I was expecting more snow. If I didn’t have to work I’d be at home. Definitely,” said Rico Ricard, 36, who was walking from the subway to his job at a city facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just outside Boston.

Winter storm warnings were in effect for parts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and coastal Maine, with as much as a foot of snow forecast for northern parts of the northeasternmost U.S. state.

The storm slowed travel in the region, with Boston Logan International Airport reporting 13 percent of departing flights canceled, as well as 9 percent of arrivals.

It proved a bit of a damper for businesses that depend on balmier weather, though it didn’t stop 45-year-old Jason Sanford from setting up a line of bicycles outside of the Broadway Bicycle School shop, a move intended to signal that the store was open despite the weather.

“Luckily, we’ve had nice weather, so we have a basement full of tune-ups,” Sanford said. “Hopefully we’ll get ahead of it today.”

(Reporting by Scott Malone Editing by W Simon)

16 Weapons Stolen from Central Massachusetts Army Reserve Center

An Army Reserve Center located in Worcester, Massachusetts reported that 16 weapons were stolen over the weekend.

Local police are cooperating with federal and state authorities to find out how the break-in happened as well as search for the man who stole the weapons, according to CNN. The theft occurred sometime between Saturday at 6 p.m. and Sunday at 1 a.m., according to City Manager Edward Augustus.

The FBI identified the weapons that were stolen: ten 9mm M-11 pistols and six 5.56 M-4 rifles. And while the FBI says there is no indication that the theft of tied to any sort of terrorism, it’s still a concern to officials.

“I’m especially concerned about it — separate and apart from anything that has to do with terrorism — I’m just concerned by the fact that some really high caliber weapons were stolen from a military facility in the first place,” Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker told reporters Monday.

The Worcester City Manager told the Washington Post that precautions were being taken. Additional police officers would be stationed throughout the city until further notice.

CBS Boston reported that surveillance footage caught a little bit of the man and his car. Police are looking for a light-skinned man who is about 5’7” to 5’10” tall and has a stocky build. At the time of the theft, he was wearing a white t-shirt and a dark vest. The man’s car was a newer model, dark colored BMW hatchback with sport rims.

Anyone who may have information regarding the theft can send an anonymous text to 274637, or you can call the Worcester Police Department at (508) 799-8651.

Boston Marathon Bomber Convicted

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers who carried out an Islamic terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon April 15, 2013, has been found guilty of multiple charges.

The conviction included charges that can bring the death penalty such as conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction.

The conviction was not unexpected as his lawyers admitted he participated in the attack.  The defense had stated their goal was to put doubt in the minds of the jury regarding his motivations in an attempt to spare him the death penalty.  The defense painted Dzhokhar as being brainwashed by his older brother Tamerlan into radical Islam.

“If not for Tamerlan, [the bombing] would not have happened,” Clarke told the jury during closing arguments.

The trial now moves to the punishment phase with the same jurors from the initial phase of the trial.

Prosecutors will be focusing on the fact that extremist Jihadi websites were found on both brother’s computers.  They also showed the writings of Dzhokhar on the boat where he was captured that read “stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.”

Defense attorney Judy Clarke has worked with other high-profile clients to have them spared the death penalty.  She worked to keep the Unabomber and Susan Smith, who drowned her children, from being sent to death row.