Proctor bias extended beyond Karen Read case, defense attorney claims
The conduct in the Karen Read case that led to Michael Proctor 's firing from the State Police does not appear to be a one-off.
Attorney Rosemary Scapicchio, who represents two murder defendants, Myles King and Shawn Johnson, whose cases were investigated by Proctor, said Thursday that information pulled from his personal phone shows he was biased toward the defendants.
"It's going to be a very difficult conversation to have with my clients, having to listen to this information and understand just how biased the investigation was," Scapicchio said after a hearing on the issue of disclosing information generated by the federal investigation into the Read case.
During his investigation into Read, Proctor sent derogatory texts about her to his friends and family, including once saying he wished she would kill herself. Those messages were first uncovered by a federal investigation.
In the wake of the Read case, defense attorneys, including Scapicchio, sought access to Proctor's phone to determine whether the behavior in the Read investigation was isolated.
"It's exactly what we thought it was going to be," she said. "I don't know how you read the information that we have access to and not see inherent bias, absolute bias, of the investigators that were investigating."
A tranche of information from Proctor's personal phone was first disclosed to defense attorneys in cases he investigated last week, after the district attorney's office revealed it had found information beneficial to the defendants on the phone. Another disclosure of information is expected on Friday, Scapicchio said.
In the Read case, prosecutors did not call Proctor to testify during her second trial, despite his role as the primary investigator. Scapicchio indicated she would call the former trooper if the government does not call him as a witness at trial for her clients.
The bigger concern for Scapicchio is whether Proctor's bias extended to others on the case, including his supervisors.
"We don't know if the bias begins and ends at Trooper Proctor, or if it seeps out beyond that," she said. "We need to then go back and see who else was investigating, whether or not they were also tainted by what we've learned about Trooper Proctor."
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