DA wants murderer's motion for new trial tossed
BARNSTABLE -- 1/27/14 -- Christopher McCowen, who was convicted in 2006 of the 2002 rape and murder of Christa Worthington in Truro, is escorted into Barnstable Superior Court for a hearing on a motion for a new trial.Cape Cod Times/Christine Hochkeppel
By George Brennan
January 27, 2014
BARNSTABLE – Prosecutors are resisting convicted murderer Christopher McCowen's attempt to have a motion for a new trial withdrawn and instead want the judge dismiss the motion.
McCowen, a Cape trash hauler, was convicted in 2006 of the 2002 rape and murder of Christa Worthington, a Truro fashion writer. Worthington was found stabbed and her 2½-year-old daughter clutching her mother's body.
During a brief hearing today before Barnstable Superior Court Judge Gary Nickerson, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said McCowen's motion for a new trial smears the reputation of the state's chief medical officer Dr. Henry Nields.
“Fundamental fairness requires it be denied on its merits,” O'Keefe said in a rare appearance arguing a case before the court.
The Worthington murder case went unsolved for three years before McCowen was arrested after giving a voluntary DNA sample to investigators.
McCowen appeared at today's hearing dressed in blue pants, a gray sweatshirt with an untucked white T-shirt underneath. Leaving the courthouse, he smiled and joked with corrections officers about cameras waiting to snap his photograph outside.
O'Keefe was joined by First Assistant District Attorney Michael Trudeau and state police Capt. Chris Mason.
The state's Supreme Judicial Court upheld McCowen's conviction in 2011, but his attorney at the time, Robert George, had already filed a separate motion for a new trial in 2010 at Barnstable Superior Court.
The motion alleged Nields, now the state's chief medical examiner, forged paperwork that certified him as a pathologist. The man who made the allegation, Dr. Stanton Kessler, the state's former acting chief medical examiner, has since died and George is serving a sentence in federal prison after being convicted of money laundering.
That left McCowen's new attorney, Gary Pelletier, before the court today arguing that the motion can no longer go forward because the key witness, Kessler, is dead.
For that reason, Pelletier argued the judge should allow him to withdraw the motion, but short of that said it must be dismissed on the “inability to prosecute,” rather than the merits. “We have the burden of proof,” he said. “We can't go forward on this motion.”
The motion has languished for four years, O'Keefe said. Defense attorneys benefit from the cloud the allegation creates, he said.
State police did an “exhaustive, multi-state investigation” that disproved Kessler's allegations about Nields, O'Keefe said. He offered to turn those documents over to Nickerson for review.
Nickerson agreed to look at an affidavit and supporting documents from O'Keefe, which the DA said would be produced within days. If a further hearing is needed, it will be scheduled, Nickerson said.
McCowen is serving a life sentence at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater.
Before today's court appearance, Pelletier said he is already working on a separate motion for a new trial on McCowen's behalf. He declined to provide the basis for that motion.
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