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 - 6/24/08

posted 6/24/08: Elliot Weinstein is lucky they make people go through security screening at the courthouse. I heard there was a strong desire to whack him with metal knuckles after he suggested that Rachel killed baby Lillian and then shot herself in the head. He implied the idea of suicide during questioning of the medical examiner last week, but today he actually had the audacity to suggest it as a reality.

The idea is so ludicrous on its face, it should be unethical for an attorney to say such a thing to a jury. But in this state where defense attorneys can do whatever they want -- no matter how painful to crime victims and their families -- the "defense at any cost" philosophy trumps all common sense and decency.

I might feel differently if there was even one iota of evidence that Rachel had anything to do with the crime -- but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing except Weinstein's cruel imagination.

Prosecutor Michael Fabbri mocked the claim in his excellent closing during which he recalled every important bit of evidence without notes -- unlike Weinstein who read his closing argument as if it were a eulogy for a distant cousin.

Rachel Entwistle indisputably loved her baby deeply - and in the aftermath of such a horrifying crime, you would think a defense attorney might understand that suggesting otherwise would cause needless pain to a family that will never recover.

It's not as if Weinstein HAD to lie about Rachel or that it was somehow necessary so he could avoid being accused of malpractice or "ineffective assistance of counsel". He did as well as he could have done, poking tiny holes in a few pieces of evidence. But some cases have no defense and a decent lawyer would admit as much.

Instead, we watched a trial with overwhelming evidence of guilt become a showcase for a gratuitous insult to the honor and reputation of a dead woman and a heartbreaking slap in the face to the people who loved her.

And get this -- Weinstein GOT PAID to sling lies and mud it with MY and YOUR tax dollars! I say we all get together and sue him for a refund. I have no problem with the public's money being used to ensure a fair trial for even the most brutal of criminals. But accusing a dead woman of killing herself and her baby has nothing to do with due process.

There were actually TWO publicly-funded lawyers assigned to defend the case - which makes it even more of an outrage. How many lawyers does it take to put on NO defense and insult the victim and her family? And did it really have to sop up more than two years of the public's money to get ready for a trial where the plan was to do nothing but slap the poor victim around?

Claiming Neil was crazy would have been so much more palatable than claiming Rachel executed her own beloved baby -- "in the heart". Yes - just when you thought he couldn't go lower, Weinstein thought it appropriate to emphasize that baby Lillian was shot in the heart, as if to prove somehow that Rachel must have been depressed because she shot baby Lillian in the heart, indicating some sick expression of motherly love gone awry.

Unbelievable.
 

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 6/23/08: Now that this case has gone to the jury, it doesn't look good for the defense. It simply beggars common sense to think that a man would find his wife and child dead from a "murder-suicide" and decide his best solution would be to leave them as-is and fly home to England. The jury will do their duty and consider that which they have been charged to consider, but in the end, I still feel simple common sense is Entwistle's biggest enemy.

I'm surprised he let it go this long, only to present this defense, via Mr. Weinstein: "Neil did not do this." If Neil is found guilty, we might be able to look back at his refusal to plead even when his defense was virtually nonexistent and say it's evidence once again of a psychopathic personality at work, refusing even in the face of a well-organized and substantial prosecution to admit the story being told by Mr. Entwistle is supremely hard to swallow. Such personalities are known for their ability to act as if they haven't just lied to your face, even when caught in the lie.

I almost feel sorry for Mr. Weinstein. No witnesses for the defense presenting alternate theories of evidence. Just "Neil did not do this." Perhaps the Entwistle defense team is more interested in the variety of appeals they will be able to mount if Neil is found guilty. Attorney Weinstein appeared to try and lay the groundwork for future appeals at the beginning of the trial with his vocal complaints about the judge's refusal to permit a change of venue. I have to wonder now if he wasn't telegraphing his understanding that they didn't have much of a leg to stand on.

Then again, you never know. One thing anyone who watches trials and crime stories will tell you is this: juries are truly unpredictable. That's the beauty and sometimes the danger of the system. Still: I'm convinced that Mr. Entwistle may just end up spending the next big chunk of his life in an American prison.
 

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 6/20/08: The theme of the defendant’s case - that “things are not always what they appear to be” - first articulated in Elliot Weinstein’s opening statement and repeated often during the cross examination of the Commonwealth’s witnesses, continued to gain content during the cross examination of the forensic pathologist.

In what can only be described as a model cross examination, Stephanie Page obtained and kept control of the witness, extracting from him admissions consistent with the theory that the death of mother and daughter was a murder/suicide.

After obtaining admissions from (medical examiner) Dr. Zane that he did not rule out suicide as a cause of Rachel Entwistle’s death before forming the conclusion that the manner of her death was homicide at the hands of another, Ms. Page, using well respected forensic pathology texts, repeatedly got Dr. Zane to agree that much of the physical evidence was also consistent with suicide. For example, Rachel Entwistle had gunshot residue on both sides of her hands, which the defense will undoubtedly argue to the jury is more likely to have occurred if she were holding the gun than if someone else was. This theory also explains why there was no indication of a struggle by Rachel Entwistle before the death of the baby and why the bodies of the two were found in the positions described.

Moreover, suicide also explains the damning Internet search to Internet sites about killing methods. Because, as the defense brought out, the fact that no one attempted to lift prints off of the computer keys, it could well have been Rachel who was looking at the sites, not the defendant. Assuming that suicide is the real defense and not just a beard for another theory to be launched later, look for the defense to attempt to develop a reason why Rachel Entwistle would do such a thing – a motive like finding out her husband was a porno/escort freak on the Web or that she was suffering from some condition which caused her to act irrationally

The problem for the defense is that even with all of this, they still have to deal with Mr. Entwistle’s return to England, his inconsistent statements to friends and the police, his failure to attend the funeral.

At the beginning of this case most people - lawyers and non-lawyers alike - considered this case a lay down for the prosecution. But, sometimes things are just not what they appear to be.

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.