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Boston Herald
Boston Herald
7 Jul 2023
Grace Zokovitch


NextImg:Emanuel Lopes trial: Jury continues to deliberate verdict in double-homicide case

Jury deliberations will continue for a sixth day in the case of Emanuel Lopes, the Weymouth man on trial for the 2018 murders of a cop and 77-year-old bystander.

Lopes, 25, is accused of shooting Weymouth Police Sgt. Michael Chesna, 42, and bystander Vera Adams, 77, in the early hours of July 15, 2018, nearly five years ago. The defendant has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges in Norfolk Superior Court, including two counts of murder.

One juror was replaced on Wednesday, further complicating long-running deliberations.

Through detailed testimony from officers and witnesses, the case laid out a brutal series of events that Saturday night into Sunday morning.

Lopes was having a normal time swimming and socializing with his friend and their girlfriends, witnesses testified, before a heated call with his girlfriend’s former fling abruptly shifted the tone of the night.

Eventually in the pre-dawn hours Sunday, according to testimony, the defendant was in a highly emotional state, crashing his girlfriend’s car alone near South Shore Hospital and fleeing through a nearby neighborhood where Sgt. Chesna found him walking and holding a rock over his head.

A neighbor told officers he witnessed Chesna tell Lopes to drop the rock. The defendant then threw the rock at the officer, took his gun and shot him several times, the witness said.

Lopes was shot in the leg, subdued and arrested by responding officers. After the events, police found the body of Adams shot on her porch.

Lopes’s defense has argued the defendant has a long history of severe mental illness diagnoses and hospitalization and lacks “criminal responsibility” for his actions that night.

A lack of criminal responsibility defense calls for evidence the defendant has a mental disease or defect and as a result is unable to understand or conform to the law. If Lopes was found not guilty under the defense, he would receive treatment in a secure state facility until a judge deemed him no longer mentally ill and a threat.