The retrial of the man authorities say shot and killed a Weymouth Police officer and a septuagenarian bystander five years ago is slated to begin on Jan. 8.
Emanuel Lopes appeared again in Norfolk Superior Court Thursday afternoon with his attorneys to argue out some motions in a hearing lasting more than an hour and a half ahead of a fresh trial date to begin next month.
Lopes already faced trial in that same court for the shooting murders of Weymouth Police Sgt. Michael Chesna, 42, and bystander Vera Adams, 77, in the early hours of July 15, 2018, among 11 total related charges. That ended up being declared a mistrial on July 10, following weeks of jury deliberations that never amounted to a verdict.
Lopes has remained without bail as attorneys battle out behind the scenes with a flurry of motions.
Attorney Larry Tipton at the Thursday hearing argued for a continuance of the January court date to allow more time to get another expert to weigh in on Lopes’ criminal culpability on that chaotic night five years ago, but Judge Beverly J. Cannone denied the motion.
The new trial will be held in Bristol County Superior Court in Taunton instead of at the Norfolk Superior Court, according to Thursday’s hearing. Taunton was chosen because, Cannone said, it’s far enough south that many in the jury pool would be more likely to get their news from Providence, R.I., than from Boston, leading to a more neutral pool.
According to arguments in the previous trial, Lopes was having a rather ordinary day with a friend he was staying with, as well as that friend’s girlfriend and Lopes’ own girlfriend. But Lopes’ mood allegedly took an abrupt turn as the quartet had gone out to rent a movie from a local RedBox when he got a phone call from his girlfriend’s former partner.
He then allegedly took his girlfriend’s white BMW, crashed it into another vehicle by South Shore Hospital and ran from the scene. Sgt. Chesna was the first to find him after an area resident called to complain that a rock had been thrown through the window.
Prosecutors say that Chesna ordered Lopes to drop a large rock he was holding but that Lopes instead threw it at the police officer’s head and then allegedly walked over, grabbed Chesna’s service pistol and shot him five times in the head and chest.
Another officer shot at Lopes through the police cruiser window, striking Lopes in the leg. Police would soon apprehend him and only then realize that 77-year-old bystander Vera Adams had been shot and killed in the mayhem as she sat on her nearby porch.
The defense mounted a lack of criminal responsibility argument for Lopes, with defense attorney Larry 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.”
