Trial begins for police officer charged in woman's death
Beverly police Officer Stuart Merry said he was in bed at 7 p.m. the night before he crashed his police cruiser into a parked car Jan. 20, 2007, killing the woman sitting inside.
He said he didn't drink any alcohol that night, and a test after the crash found no illegal drugs or alcohol in his system.
He said he didn't remember the last seconds before the crash.
That was some of what he told a state police investigator five days after the crash and was part of the evidence jurors heard in the first day of Merry's trial when it began Monday in Peabody District Court.
Merry faces a charge of motor vehicle homicide by negligent operation.
Merry was on duty and behind the wheel of cruiser 903 on Jan. 20, 2007 when the vehicle crossed the yellow line and slammed into a parked Toyota on Cabot Street, killing Bonney Burns, 61.
After an almost eight-month investigation, Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett announced he would seek the charges against Merry.
Jury selection took about an hour and then the jury heard more than four hours of testimony.
The eight member jury - made up of one man and seven women - is scheduled to visit the crash scene today as well as hear from a state police accident reconstruction expert and an accident reconstruction expert hired by Merry's attorney, Neil Rossman.
In a statement made five days after the crash to Massachusetts Sgt. Dennis Marks, Merry said he had put a 32-ounce fountain drink he had bought at 7-Eleven moments earlier in the car's drink holder.
Merry was on patrol for no more than 15 minutes before the crash, he said, and the last thing he remembers is going up a small incline and around a corner on Cabot Street.
"The next thing I remember is waking up and seeing the lights in the emergency room," Merry told Marks in an interview. A transcript of the interview was read for jurors. Merry listened from a seat at the defense table in the small courtroom.
One witness, Blake Kelcey, said that he didn't see a driver behind the wheel of the cruiser seconds before the crash and that the cruiser drifted into Burns' car. Two other witnesses, Amy Munoz and Heather Swan, said the car made a sharp left turn before the crash, and Munoz said it looked like the Merry was trying to make a U-turn.
"They basically agree on what they say," prosecutor Nicholas Walsh said.
Judge Robert Brennan said the case would hinge on the prosecutor's ability to prove that, by legal definition, that Merry was operating the cruiser in the 11 seconds before the crash.
Beverly Citizen