EX-STATE REP. APPEALING ASSAULT RAP
Convicted of striking woman
Disgraced former state Rep. Carlos Henriquez, who was run out of the Legislature following his 2014 conviction for physically assaulting a woman, is hoping the state Appeals Court will grant him a second chance to clear his name.
“The results that came from these allegations were not the right results,” attorney William White Jr. said yesterday after pleading Henriquez’s case before a special sitting of Justices James R. Milkey, Joseph M. Ditkoff and Gregory I. Massing at the John Adams Courthouse.
The panel did not indicate how soon it will render a decision on whether Henriquez should be retried. Henriquez did not attend.
The 40-year-old Dorchester Democrat launched a failed bid earlier this year to fill mayoral candidate Tito Jackson’s District 7 seat on the City Council, but garnered only 263 votes.
A Cambridge District Court jury convicted Henriquez three years ago of punching Katherine Gonzalves in the chest for refusing to have sex with him.
Henriquez was acquitted of backhanding Gonzalves and of choking her. Judge Michele B. Hogan sentenced Henriquez to serve six months in jail. One month later, Henriquez became the first member of the House expelled in nearly a century.
The crux of White’s argument is that Hogan changed the verdict slip while jurors were deliberating so they could convict him on separate violent acts.
White said in his written brief to the court that Hogan “infected the jury by changing the scope of deliberations.”
But Assistant Middlesex District Attorney Laura Kirshenbaum countered, “There were at least three separate assaults at issue and defense counsel didn’t see the need to differentiate between them. The defense was that no assault took place. So, I think the record is clear that the defense would have been the same ...”