Jury selection in the second trial of a Weymouth man accused of killing a police officer and bystander five years ago is set to begin Monday with a jury the court hopes is less tainted on the matter.
“I’m not continuing the trial,” Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone said during a final motions hearing Wednesday morning. “We begin Monday morning with empanelment.”
On July 10, Cannone declared a mistrial in the case of Emanuel Lopes. Jurors had begun deliberating his fate on June 28 and — one replacement of juror later — had still not come to a decision after 10 days.
Lopes is charged with the shooting murders of Weymouth Police Sgt. Michael Chesna, 42, and bystander Vera Adams, 77, in the early morning hours of July 15, 2018. Lopes has pleaded not guilty to the murders as well as 9 other charges related to the incident.
Those other charges are two counts of assault to murder armed with a firearm, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, carrying a firearm without a license, larceny of a firearm, leaving the scene of property damage, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, use of a motor vehicle without authority, and destruction of property.
On Wednesday, Norfolk assistant district attorneys and defense attorney Larry Tipton argued their final motions ahead of a new trial against Lopes. The motions included the scope of expert testimony, the admissibility of an earlier drug charge and other contours to the competing narratives in the upcoming trial.
The outcome of this trial will be made up of a Bristol County jury — which Cannone had said in a previous hearing she believes could be less tainted because they are more likely to get their news from Providence than from Boston, where Lopes has received a lot of coverage since that tragic night.
The trial will take place in Bristol Superior Court in Taunton, whose staff, Cannone said, has “moved heaven and earth for us” and will still have to try its own civil docket cases following each day of the jury trial. The trial itself could take as long as three weeks based on discussions at Wednesday’s hearing.
Jury selection itself could last a week or even 10 days, though Cannone said Wednesday that people say juries tend to get empaneled smoothly in Bristol County.
In last summer’s trial, attorneys laid out a chaotic night no matter which way you looked at it. Lopes was with a group of friends and about to rent a movie from a local Red Box when his mood and actions changed abruptly after receiving a phone call from his girlfriend’s former partner. He then took his girlfriend’s car, crashed it in a neighborhood, got out and acted erratically enough to cause neighbors to call the cops.
Sgt. Chesna was first on the scene. Chesna ordered Lopes to drop the large rock he held. Instead, prosecutors said, Lopes chucked the rock at Chesna’s head, walked over, stole Chesna’s service pistol and shot the police officer five times in the head and chest.
Another responding officer was able to fire a shot through his window that struck Lopes in his leg, allowing police to catch him and arrest him. After the scene had quieted, police found resident Vera Adams had been shot and killed as she sat on her nearby porch.
The defense mounted a lack of criminal responsibility argument for Lopes, with Tipton arguing that his client has a long history of severe mental illness and often “ranted” about Martians, government conspiracies and the Illuminati and exhibited “symptoms of voices and shadows, people that weren’t there. Paranoia.”
