WESTFIELD – A city man was sentenced to serve two concurrent 18-month terms in the house of corrections after a jury found him to be guilty of two charges of reckless assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon.
The jury found him to be not guilty of a charge of attempting to commit the crime of murder.
The charges stem from a backyard incident on June 18, 2011, at a Meadow Street address.
Officer Richard Mazza reports that he responded to a report of a fight and found three people “covered with blood.”
The two victims, a Meadow Street resident and his father, said that a man, later identified as Robert S. Williams, 41, of 12 Meadow St., had come to their backyard fence from his property complaining about the loud exhaust noise from the victim’s truck and threatened to stab and kill them while holding a knife over his head.
The two men told Mazza that after about five minutes Williams came into the younger victim’s yard and, as they were backing away from him, their assailant lunged at the older man and knocked him to the ground.
The elder victim said that while he was on the ground Williams stabbed his bicep with the knife.
The younger man then “jumped on the back of Williams to gain control of the knife and to keep Williams from stabbing his father again and he received a slice to his left hand in the struggle for the knife”, Mazza reports.
Mazza reports that, when he interviewed Williams, on two occasions the suspect “boasted and bragged” that he had stabbed the chief of police. Mazza notes that the elder victim “closely resembles the chief of police.”
Williams’ first attorney, Maria T. Barroso filed a motion to suppress that statement, and others, but her motion was denied.
After Barroso was allowed to withdraw, William’s next attorney, Edward M. Marasi, motioned at his trial both for a mistrial and for a directed verdict of not guilty based on the claim that a district court does not have jurisdiction over a charge of attempted murder which, he argued, must be heard in superior court.
Moreover, Marasi argued, by tainting the jurors’ minds with the implication that he was guilty of attempted murder the judge had influenced their ability to fairly adjudicate the two charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon with which Williams was also charged.
Judge Philip A. Contant denied Marasi’s motions and the jury found his client to be guilty of the two assault and battery charges.
The jury found Williams to be not guilty of attempting to commit a crime, murder.
Contant imposed a sentence of two and a half years in the house of correction for each of the charges he was found guilty of and ordered that Williams serve two concurrent 18-month terms in the house of correction with the balance of the sentences to be suspended.
Contant ordered that, after his release, Williams be placed on probation until Nov. 21, 2017.
