At issue are the notes and tape-recordings from an interview police conducted with Jarrid Reese days after the shooting. John Amabile, Moore’s lawyer, characterized the evidence as exculpatory and said it had been withheld from the defense until three weeks ago.
Zabin, in his arguments before taking the witness stand, disputed Amabile’s characterization of the importance of notes and recordings. When he testified, Zabin explained that he forwarded the materials to Amabile and John Cunha, Washington’s lawyer, as soon as they hit his desk.
“The day that we received it, or the day after, you received it,’’ Zabin told Amabile.
Two police detectives, Frank McLaughlin and John Brown, testified earlier in the hearing that when they interviewed Reese, he told the detectives that he had been on Sutton Street to buy marijuana shortly before the shootings, and that he encountered a man he knew only by the nickname “Dre.’’ Reese, 23, of Dorchester, said that Dre was “going off’’ and was heard saying “I’m about to do that [guy] dirty.’’
McLaughlin said he found the notes of the interview on Jan. 19 after Zabin asked detectives to go back over the case file to make sure that he had everything he needed before the start of the trial. McLaughlin said he should have documented the notes in an official report in 2010, but he overlooked them because many other things were happening during the investigation.
Reese and his lawyer appeared briefly in the courtroom yesterday. After a sidebar with Judge Christine McEvoy, the judge said Reese appears to have a constitutional right not to testify in the case. Reese, who is in custody on an unrelated matter but is scheduled to be released in days, has been reluctant to be interviewed or to testify.
“Nobody knows what he will, or will not, say about the events of that night,’’ Zabin said.
McEvoy is expected to rule today on the defense’s motion to dismiss the case, but indicated that the trial is likely to begin as scheduled.
