Retrial begins in 2018 shooting deaths
Man is accused of killing two
DEDHAM — The retrial of Emanuel A. Lopes, the man accused of killing a Weymouth police officer and a 77-year-old woman sitting on her porch in 2018, began Wednesday with prosecutors laying out a timeline of events with a familiar slate of witnesses, while defense attorneys focused on Lopes’s mental state leading up to and during the alleged shooting.
Lopes, 26, is charged with first-degree murder in the slayings of Sergeant Michael Chesna and Vera Adams, 77. He was tried once for the crime already, in July, but jurors — selected from Worcester County due to the high profile of the case — could not reach a consensus on whether Lopes was mentally incapacitated at the time of the killings.
In response, Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly A. Cannone declared a mistrial. She ordered jurors for the retrial be selected from Bristol County.
During opening statements, Norfolk Assistant District Attorney Gregory Connor told jurors that on the morning of July 15, 2018, Lopes stole and crashed his girlfriend’s car before fleeing on foot to Burton Terrace, a residential street in Weymouth, where he threw a rock through the window of a nearby house around 7 a.m.
There, Connor said, Chesna approached Lopes and ordered him to drop another large rock he was holding. Instead, Lopes threw it at the officer, hitting him in the face and knocking him off his feet.
Lopes “never broke stride” as he moved toward Chesna, took his gun out of his holster, and fired eight times while standing over the officer, Connor told jurors.
It was all new to the jury, but the judge and attorneys had heard those details at Lopes’s previous trial. Members of Chesna’s family listened, some gazing at the floor, as lawyers and witnesses ran through the order of events that July morning.
Weymouth Police Chief Richard Fuller sat in the front row, shaking his head at times. Painful as it may be, the retrial is unavoidable, he said.
“I’ve just come to the realization that it has to be” this way, Fuller said after sitting through the day’s proceedings. “And it is what it is, and we’ll get through it. We don’t have a choice, right?”
In her opening statement, Lopes’s attorney Christine Feeney made an emotional appeal that he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, painting a picture of a young man who for years struggled to keep his mental health in check.
“A 14-year-old boy sits with a school psychologist and he tells her sometimes ‘I hear voices that no one else hears,’” she began, summoning an episode from Lopes’s childhood.
He would go on to see more than a dozen psychologists, Feeney said.
In July 2018, Lopes was homeless, unemployed, and fighting with his girlfriend — stressors Feeney said can trigger mania in a person with mental illness.
After opening statements, Tony Martin, director of public safety at South Shore Hospital, took the stand as the prosecution’s first witness. Connor played footage from a hospital security camera that showed Lopes running away from the car crash.
A subsequent witness, a nursing assistant at the hospital named Mark Dodge, testified that his car was totaled after it was struck by the BMW Lopes was driving. Dodge said Lopes stepped out of the car after the crash and paced back and forth for several seconds before slamming his fist against the driver’s side window and trying to open the door of Dodge’s car.
Larry Tipton, another attorney for Lopes, said during cross examination that Dodge had previously testified before a grand jury that Lopes pounded two fists against the glass and asked why his story changed. Dodge said he had reviewed video footage this week, which made him realize only one fist was used.
William McGuiness, who lives on Burton Terrace, testified that he watched Lopes throw the rock at Chesna before taking a “defensive stance” over the officer and firing eight shots. Connor brought a cardboard box to McGuiness and asked him to look inside.
“Is that the rock that was thrown at the officer?” Connor asked. “Yes, it is,” McGuiness replied.
Connor asked the witness to demonstrate how the man held the rock, and McGuiness held it over his head, swinging it back and forth.
Before jurors arrived on Wednesday, prosecutors and defense lawyers sparred over whether certain statements Lopes made during his arrest should be admitted as evidence. Tipton argued that certain things his client said were said while he was undergoing psychosis and could not be considered the statements of a rational intellect.
But Cusick argued that Lopes repeated variations of “I’m sorry” while interacting with police, described killing a police officer, and appeared to fear for his life.
“I suggest those are the product of a rational intellect,” Cusick said.
Cannone ruled Lopes’s statements could be presented to jurors in their entirety this time.
Around 2:50, Cannone ended the day’s proceedings. Chesna’s family left of the second-floor courtroom and convened in a jury room on the first floor, exchanging hugs with Weymouth police officers on their way in.