House Speaker Ron Mariano suggested Thursday that broad budget cuts could be on the table when lawmakers sit down next year to draft the fiscal year 2026 budget, painting a grim financial picture for Massachusetts fueled by the historically high cost of running state-run shelters.
Massachusetts
Judge reportedly denies motion to disqualify DA in Karen Read case
Karen Read‘s motion to disqualify the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office from prosecuting her upcoming murder trial has reportedly been denied.
The Boston Globe reported Friday that Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone announced the office of District Attorney Michael Morrissey would remain on the case in a ruling Thursday.
Read is accused of killing John O’Keefe, her Boston police officer boyfriend, in Canton, Massachusetts, in 2022. Her lawyers have alleged that she was framed in a massive coverup, which prosecutors have denied.
“Though certain comments by DA Morrissey crossed the line of permissible extrajudicial statements by a prosecutor, they are not egregious misconduct that is reasonably or substantially likely to materially prejudice or interfere with a fair trial,” Cannone wrote in her ruling, the Globe reported.
“District Attorney Morrissey is pleased the matter can now move expeditiously to trial,” the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement to NBC10 Boston, which has not independently seen the ruling.
Earlier this week, Canonne denied another motion from Read’s lawyers to dismiss the case against her, clearing the way for the high-profile trial against her to go ahead on April 16.
Morrissey’s office, meanwhile, has filed a motion of its own asking Cannone to establish a 500-foot “buffer zone” around the courthouse to keep protesters away. The motion also requests clothing and other objects displaying “Free Karen Read” to be banned in the vicinity of prospective jurors — something a rally organizer told NBC10 Boston would be an abuse of power that defies the First Amendment.
For a trial, one of the challenges that Cannone will face is to seat an impartial jury, given the intensive media attention the case has gotten amid the claims of a coverup, according to NBC10 Boston legal analyst Michael Coyne.
“You have people with pretty extreme on both sides of this issue already, and the court has to take pains to make sure that none of those people end in the jury itself,” he said.
Coyne said earlier this week that it was unlikely Cannone would remove Morrissey from the case, calling it a “very high bar” to meet.
At a court appearance last week, attorneys for both sides presented arguments on three motions filed by the defense seeking records pertaining to various witnesses in the case.
The first motion sought records from the Massachusetts State Police internal affairs division pertaining to Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator in the Read case, who is under internal investigation for an undisclosed potential violation of department policy. Neither prosecutors nor Proctor’s attorney objected to the motion.
The second motion sought phone records from Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and Kevin Albert from April 1, 2023 to present. Brian Albert and Brian Higgins were reportedly inside Brian Albert’s house on the night of O’Keefe’s death, and Kevin Albert is Brian’s brother and a Canton police officer.
Defense attorney David Yannetti said the phone records would help to establish Read’s argument that someone other than her was responsible for O’Keefe’s death and there is a conspiracy to frame her for the murder.
“We’re entitled to explore whether this investigation was conducted ethically,” Yannetti said. “The records are relevant because they tend to show a cover up. They show a Canton police officer inserting himself into a case his department was conflicted out of precisely because he is an officer there.”
“We need these records,” he added. “Going to trial without them would violate my client’s rights.”
Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the defense’s statements were “largely inaccurate” and “injected with hyperbole” and the motion should be denied.
The final motion argued at last week’s hearing was a request from the defense for phone records from Brian Albert, Brian Higgins and former Canton Police Chief Kenneth Berkowitz. Yannetti focused much of his argument on two phone calls between Albert and Brian Higgins around 2:22 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, less than four hours before O’Keefe’s body was found on Albert’s lawn.
Albert and Higgins both reportedly tried to claim the calls were accidental, but Yannetti said that seems impossible given both the late hour and the fact that they both said they were in bed at the time.
“When he was first confronted, Brian Higgins tried to claim it was a butt dial,” Yannetti said. “I’ve never seen a case where there have been so many butt dials, to be frank.”
Cannone allowed the first motion last week but did not rule on the second two.
Mold at Brighton emergency shelter in former motel forces families to relocate
Two dozen families, many of them migrants, were forced to relocate due to a mold infestation at an emergency shelter in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood.
Massachusetts says 24 families are being relocated from the former Charles River Motel on Soldiers Field Road. The situation is causing frustration for those who rely on the essential assistance.
The families will stay at a temporary shelter while the mold is cleared from the rooms.
One woman told NBC10 Boston she’s been sounding the alarm for months.
“I was so angry, I was so upset, and honestly, there were so many times I would call my godmother and I would just cry and be like, ‘This is unfair, it’s unreasonable,’” said Kimrah Minuty.
She and her daughter spent 10 months living at the emergency shelter.
Minuty says the moment she stepped foot into the building, there were many red flags, like mice, bedbugs and mold in their bedroom.
She says she has been making phone calls and sending emails to the people in charge since July of 2023 to explain the situation, but no one took her seriously.
“I started noticing there were spots on our walls and air conditioning units had black stuff on it,” Minuty said. “My daughter never had asthma, now she needs an inhaler.”
More on emergency shelters in Massachusetts
“The health and wellbeing of families in shelter is a top priority,” Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities said in a statement Friday. “As soon as we were made aware of mold at this site, they took steps to temporarily relocate the families and directed the operator of the facility to remediate the situation.”
The motel is privately owned by JHM River LLC, a firm in Lexington, but the Catholic Charities organization runs the case management inside this shelter.
“We are not the owners of this building and we have alerted the right people to this and when there was the situations with the bed bugs, right away exterminators came in,” said Beth Chambers of Catholic Charities of Boston.
The state did not say how long it will be until families will be allowed back to this shelter.
NBC10 Boston reached out to the owners of this property, but has not yet heard back.
Jewish and Muslim women unite to change Israel-Hamas war narrative
A new global grassroots movement known as The Collective is uniting Jewish and Muslim women’s rights activists in conversation about Israel and Gaza.
It all started on Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists attacked Israeli civilians. According to Israel, Hamas killed over 1,200 people and abducted 240 hostages who were brought into the Gaza Strip.
“I was horrified what was taking place, especially violence against women, the brutality of the rape,” said Farhana Khorshed, a founding member of The Collective. “And I don’t hear anybody condemning Hamas as a terrorist group.”
Khorshed, who serves as the executive director of the New England Bangladeshi American Foundation and is also a board member of the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC), took a trip to Israel with other Muslim women to show support.
With rockets flying overhead, she recalled, “I felt like I walked into a horror movie set.”
It’s on that trip that Khorshed met Paula Kweskin, a Jewish American documentary filmmaker and human rights attorney who lives in Israel.
“I really fell into a very dark place. How could something like this happen?” Kweskin said of the Hamas attack.
But what helped her through was dozens of women in her network — many of them Muslim – reaching out to her in support. One friend suggested getting a group of women together to discuss the attack, they hopped on a Zoom call, and The Collective was born.
“We realized there’s something very powerful that can come out of these authentic conversations,” Kweskin said. “To say in one loud voice as women, we do not stand for this.”
The Collective is a subset of “The 49%,” a women’s rights nonprofit founded and directed by Kweskin, aimed at telling women’s most urgent stories through film. Kweskin said the goal is to raise awareness of women’s and social issues to try to change people’s minds and laws.
Since the Oct. 7 attacks, the Palestinian enclave health ministry reported about 32,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli Defense Force. Calls for a ceasefire are echoed around the world as the bombing continues and more than 100 hostages remain in captivity.
“We should include women in Gaza and women in Israel and what they’re going through. Maybe that would be a better message for people to comprehend that we are not biased. We are actually voicing out for all women,” Khorshed said.
The women in The Collective are from all different countries including Pakistan, Israel, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt and America.
They started meeting after Oct. 7 ever week and now meet every other week over Zoom. Conversations have shifted from support calls to figuring out real solutions, planning events, hosting interfaith iftars and writing op-eds about their perspectives.
Khorshed and other members of The Collective will be speaking at the Harvard Chabad on Monday to speak to students and Jewish community members about antisemitism and extremism.
“We need to look beyond our religious beliefs,” Khorshed said. “We are all Abrahamic roots. Our faith comes from the same origin. We are human first, so [Jewish women] are our sisters as well.”
More on the war between Israel and Hamas
Fake DoorDash driver busted with stolen guns after Maynard break-in spree, police say
A man who’d been posing as a DoorDash driver while breaking into at least seven homes in Maynard, Massachusetts, has been arrested, police said Friday, noting they’d recovered three guns that were taken in one of the robberies.
Joseph E…
Man hospitalized after being hit by a vehicle in Worcester
A man was hospitalized after being hit by a vehicle in Worcester, Massachusetts, on Friday afternoon.
Worcester police confirmed that a man was hit in the area of Park Avenue and Parker Street. They said it was not a hit-and-run crash.
One victi…
