Fleeing driver was out on bail
Judge slammed for $1G release
The Fall River man who fled from police, killing himself, his passenger and a Marine combat veteran in a head-on crash, was free thanks to a judge’s decision to cut his bail from $35,000 to $1,000 in an armed robbery case last September — and the family of slain new dad Kevin Quinn is slamming the courts.
Mickey Rivera, 22, charged with armed assault and a slew of armed robbery charges, posted the $1,000 bail last September and was freed after Judge Thomas McGuire allowed a motion for the dramatic reduction over the objections of prosecutors — reversing a prior judge’s decision to maintain high bail, the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office said yesterday.
Rivera, if he had not been killed Saturday on Route 28 in the Cotuit section of Barnstable, would have been due to appear in court today for a pretrial hearing in that case.
“It’s another case of courts not doing their job. This was a guy who shouldn’t have been on the streets,” said Rob Dinan, a friend of Quinn and spokesman for his family. Quinn died early Saturday when Rivera, who was in high flight from police, slammed into Quinn’s SUV. Quinn was on his way home from the hospital where he had been with his wife and their newborn daughter.
“Why would you put him back on the streets? I just don’t get it,” Dinan said, noting that Rivera had previously been charged in a home invasion in which two women were stabbed, though that case was dismissed due to identification issues. Taunton police in that case had reported he was a suspected gang member.
Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn, in a statement released yesterday, also criticized the September bail reduction.
“I was very disappointed the court reduced the defendant’s bail so drastically, based on the defendant’s criminal record and the serious nature of the charges,” Quinn said.
Rivera’s armed robbery charges stemmed from a March 2015 incident, when Fall River police responded to emergency calls of shots fired and a person down. Officers then found Anthony Carvalho, who was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police said Rivera, along with two men and a juvenile went out that evening planning to commit a robbery. The other two men are accused of killing Carvalho.
The judge’s decision to cut Rivera’s bail came one month after a Supreme Judicial Court decision instructed lower courts to set bail that is affordable for defendants. The decision also, however, granted judges the discretion to set a higher cash bail if they could provide a reason to do so.
McGuire, the judge who cut Rivera’s bail, declined the Herald’s request for comment.
Judges’ decisions to reduce bail or give convicted criminals light sentences have been highly criticized after a series of shootings of police officers — in Auburn, Barnstable and in Maine — in recent years in which critics say the alleged killers should have been behind bars.