Throughout the trial, the Daily News has invited a panel of experts to comment on what is happening in the courtroom. The panel members are: Wendy Murphy, a former Middlesex assistant district attorney and current victim/witness advocate; John LaChance, a former federal prosecutor and current defense lawyer based in Framingham, and Steve Huff, a professional crime blogger who runs two Web sites. Check back often for our experts' opinions. And if you want to share your opinion, visit our blog.

 Expert Panel - 6/14/08

posted 6/13/08: I know Mike Fabbri pretty well. I worked with him at the DA's office for years - so I'm not surprised to see him take this methodical approach to the trial. It's exactly the style I expected from Mike.

For people hoping for high entertainment value, you're not getting it.

For people hoping for a highly professional, relatively boring trial, you're getting what you want. I don't see anything close to a dog and pony show. But that's no surprise when it's the prosecution's turn. The "show" stuff usually comes from the defense.

I'm underwhelmed by the surprises so far.

The prosecutor is even taking the time to plug holes that he anticipates the defense will make when they put on their case. This stuff is hard for people to understand, unless they have a complete understanding of the case so that they can see why the prosecutor might be asking questions that don't seem especially important.

This feels like the calm before the storm. Elliot Weinstein has taken a close to the vest approach so far which means he is either planning something really big, or he knows full well there's nothing he can do.

I think one of the terribly unfair things this week was Weinstein, coming out publicly, saying he (Neil Entwistle) was crying because he didn't commit the crime. The unfair thing is the prosecutor can't come out and say anything. The prosecutor SHOULD be allowed to say "no - he was crying because he's guilty" -- but the ugly truth is, the defense can use the media to their advantage and say whatever nonsense they feel like saying - while the prosecutor is much more restrained and really can't say anything at all -- even if only to correct a misstatement by the defense.
 

Wendy Murphy is an ex-prosecutor who specialized in child abuse and sex crimes cases. The first lawyer in the country to run a program to provide free legal services to crime victims, Murphy has been fighting for victims' rights for 20 years. Having served as a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, Murphy now represents crime victims in civil and criminal cases and teaches an advanced seminar on sexual violence at the New England School of Law in Boston. As an adjunct professor, she also manages the Sexual Violence Legal News and Judicial Language projects at her law school and consults with crime victims across the country to help them achieve justice. Murphy, who lives outside of Boston, writes scholarly and pop culture articles, and lectures widely on victims' rights, sex crimes, violence against women and children, media coverage of crime and the criminal justice system.    

posted 6/14/08: Overall, the thing that hits me the hardest after the first week of the Entwistle murder trial is the sheer size and scope of the tragedy itself. Perhaps it was the classical music coming from the otherwise unseen (to the public) crime scene video, or the recitation of known and indisputable facts by the prosecution: Neil Entwistle *did* withdraw money from ATMs; he *did* inexplicably fly to England even as his wife and child lay dead in their Hopkinton home. As much as I've followed various crime stories throughout the years, I have rarely felt as if I am somehow intruding on something by tracking developments in various cases. Here, I have had that feeling, and it is unsettling.

Questions have come up, too -- mainly, how will Mr. Entwistle's attorney plausibly explain some of these things? How can anyone explain them? It is often said that peoples' reactions to grief are not 100% predictable, and that is true; still, there are some expected parameters, and Neil Entwistle's behavior just didn't fall within those parameters. Entwistle's attorney has to be able to make fathers and husbands, wives and mothers understand how one can find the two people most dear to them in the world dead from gunshot wounds and do nothing save run, get as far away from the scene as possible. That's a huge, tall order, and I'm surprised anyone would even want to take on the task at all -- but that's how the system works, for better or for worse.

Last year, blogger Steve Huff was featured in MyCase.com, a half-hour special about "cyber-sleuthing" produced for Court TV by Optomen Television. As a freelance journalist Huff contributed groundbreaking investigative articles -- including pieces about the Entwistle case -- to Court TV's CrimeLibrary.com. He currently writes about politics, crime and pop culture for Radar Magazine. Huff's active blogs are The True Crime Weblog and Random Lunatic News. Huff, who lives in Roswell, Ga., is also a classically-trained vocalist and has performed secondary tenor roles with the Atlanta and Knoxville Opera Companies. 

posted 6/6/08: I thought that (prosecutor) Mr. (Michael) Fabbri’s opening statement was well organized and designed for a circumstantial case such as this. He led with his strength, the words and actions of Neil Entwistle himself. This is important because you only have a limited time to catch the jury’s attention and have them view the evidence through the lens of the prosecution. The only problem I saw was the almost too quiet tone of the opening which muted the outrage which should exist just below the surface of the case.

The defense (Elliot Weinstein) opening provided an appropriate contrast to the prosecutor’s opening without disclosing either its specific theory of defense or details of the evidence will elicit both during cross examination of the prosecution witness and during their own case. By keeping their cards close to their vests while emphasizing the presumption of innocence and burden of proof, the defense retains a maximum amount of flexibility without telling the prosecution what the flaws in its case are before exposing those flaws to the jury.

Attorney John H. LaChance has more than 35 years of criminal trial experience in Massachusetts. He focuses his criminal defense practice on state and federal criminal charges, including drug, white collar, violent and sex crimes. LaChance spent four years as an assistant United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts. This experience helps him to understand the prosecution's way of handling both state and federal cases. He is board certified in criminal trial advocacy. In 1991, the Committee for Public Counsel Services presented him with the Edward G. Duggan Award for zealous advocacy and outstanding legal services.