The Supreme Judicial Court overturned a decision to grant bail for three brothers accused of murder in Lowell whose trial has been delayed twice after allegations emerged about one of the lead Mass State Police investigators on their case.
The second murder trial of Billy, Billoeum, and Channa Phan was initially continued after accusations arose last month that State Police Sgt. Scott Quigley had been drunk when he crashed a cruiser into a wheelchair van years earlier, leading to the injury and death of one of its occupants. Then, it was delayed again after the initiation of several investigations into the crash.
The delays opened the door for the Phans’ lawyers to petition for a bail review, leading Superior Court Judge Christopher Barry-Smith to grant the brothers $25,000 bail. In his decision, he said the time the brothers have spent incarcerated, about five years during which their first trial ended in a hung jury, was the biggest factor.
The Middlesex District Attorney’s Office immediately appealed the decision, bringing it to the state’s highest court.
SJC Associate Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt disagreed with Barry-Smith’s logic in her own decision, writing that the time factor didn’t outweigh the fundamental facts of the case, which have not changed.
“The weight placed by the judge on the time factor in his analysis whether to release the defendants on bail falls outside the range of reasonable alternatives, where the reasons underlying the defendants’ detention have not changed and overwhelmingly suggest that the defendants present a risk of flight as much today as they did when they were initially ordered detained in 2021,” Wendlandt wrote.
She also cited the seriousness of the crime — they’re accused of the 2020 killing Tyrone Phet in a gruesome shooting — the three defendants’ extensive criminal histories, and their ties to Lowell.
The latter “might in some circumstance support a defendant’s release on bail,” Wendlandt wrote, “However, those ties in this case… have limited value where the ties to the community and family are intermingled with criminal activity.”
The justice also noted that with exception of the delays caused by the disclosure of the allegations against Quigley, most of the time the Phan brothers have spent in jail was a product of the legal process and not caused by the prosecution.
Although Wendlandt sided with the prosecution on the issue of bail, she wrote that the continuance of the trial, which currently has a status conference scheduled for June because of the questions concerning Quigley, is appropriate.
“The judge did not abuse his discretion in allowing the defense additional time to learn the results of the ongoing investigations into Quigley’s conduct; the investigation by the State Police that followed; and the extent of information about the foregoing known by the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office, prosecutors in that office, and members of the prosecution team in the defendants’ case,” she wrote.
Barry-Smith said in court that he didn’t want to be in the middle of the trial or just finished with it when findings from various investigations into Quigley’s crash were published.
Quigley allegedly had a blood alcohol level of 0.11 (the legal limit is .08) during the 2023 crash that injured Special Olympian Angelo Schettino. Schettino died in the hospital about a month later.
At the time, Quigley received a marked lanes violation.
The Middlesex District Attorney’s Office said that they weren’t aware of the allegations until the end of January, when a wrongful death suit filed by Schettino’s family dug up Quigley’s medical records and his alleged blood alcohol level.
However, the office disclosed that at least one employee – not a police officer or a lawyer – did hear about the accusations from another State Police officer, Lt. Anthony Delucia, more than a year prior to the disclosure in court.
The criminal case has been referred to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, while the Middlesex DA and the State Police have initiated independent reviews of their separate handlings of the crash.
“The belated disclosures related to Quigley’s conduct, and the prospect of a potentially larger scope of misconduct, certainly is troubling,” Wendlandt wrote. “And the fact that Quigley was a lead investigator in this particular case is not to be ignored.”
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