SJC backs new trial in Lowell arson case
Defendant has spent 32 years in prison
The state’s high court yesterday affirmed a judge’s decision to grant a new trial for a man who spent 32 years in prison for a Lowell apartment building fire that killed eight people in 1982.
The now Rev. Victor Rosario, 59, of Brighton has been free on $25,000 bail since 2014, when Superior Court Judge Kathe M. Tuttman tossed his 1983 convictions for arson and eight counts of second-degree murder based on new evidence suggesting the blaze was accidental as well as doubts that were cast on Rosario’s confession to the crime.
While acknowledging in its 23-page decision that the deadly inferno “was unquestionably tragic,” the Supreme Judicial Court ruled “under our Constitution and system of laws, every criminal defendant is entitled to a fair trial where, to the extent possible, justice is done.”
Rosario and his wife, Beverly, who now work helping former prisoners reconnect with society, referred questions to their attorney Andrea Petersen.
Petersen told the Herald, “I think this SJC decision will pave the way for a lot of wrongfully convicted people to see justice can be done. Isn’t it great? He’s been waiting for this for 32 years. This is a big step toward being validated. They haven’t said he was innocent, but they have agreed that the confession was false.”
Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Petersen said it is her hope Ryan will not retry Rosario.
The justices based their decision on an affidavit from the interpreter who was with the Spanish-speaking Rosario when he was interrogated by investigators in the aftermath of the deadly March 5, 1982, conflagration.
The interpreter recalled that Rosario was “incoherent” during his questioning by police and never actually verbalized that he threw a Molotov cocktail into the occupied residence.
“Instead, the officers themselves suggested these details during the interrogation and then included them in the written statements that the defendant signed,” the SJC’s decision reads.
Rosario first told police he broke a window to try to rescue children. State psychiatrists later diagnosed him as psychotic.
The high court found convincing the argument by Rosario’s lawyers that at the time of the interrogation he was delirious from alcohol withdrawal, having typically put away a case of beer a day in combination with hard liquor.
The SJC also said an alternative theory put forth by Rosario’s appellate team for how the fire may have started based on modern forensic science “could have influenced the jury’s verdict” had it been available three decades ago.
But Harold G. Waterhouse, the arson investigator for the Lowell Police Department when the fire happened, questions the experts hired by Rosario’s defense team and said he stands by his investigation.
“I was there. I had an eyewitness. Who are these experts? Have they ever been in a burning building? I saw babies floating in water,” Waterhouse said, referring to the children who died in the fire on the first floor. “What are they basing their theory on?”