Source Boston Herald
Killer Emanuel Lopes was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison, with eligibility for parole after 40 years, for the 2018 rampage murders of Weymouth Police Sgt. Michael Chesna and bystander Vera Adams.
“Everyone makes choices in life. Mike chose to live a loyal and dedicated life,” Chesna’s widow, Cindy Chesna, said at the beginning of her lengthy and emotional victim impact statement. “Emanuel Lopes on July 15, 2018, chose to murder two people.”
Cindy Chesna said “We loved our life together. We were a team … I thought he would still be making me laugh as we were old together,” and adding that she, their two children, and the countless family and friends who were impacted by Lopes’ choices that day are still healing from the emotional wounds he inflicted.
“My children did not deserve to have their childhoods marred by trauma,” she said of the children, who were 9 and 4 years old at the time of their father’s murder and are 15 and 10 now. “They should not have to live with this burden … but sadly they will for the rest of their lives.”
Norfolk Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone delivered the sentence to a courtroom packed with family and friends of the victims as well as dozens of uniformed police officers who packed Norfolk County’s largest courtroom for the Wednesday morning hearing.
Lopes was escorted into the courtroom at 10:05 a.m. to a silent courtroom, the clatter of his handcuffs and chains the only accompaniment to the seat between his attorneys, Larry Tipton and Christine Feeney.
Lopes was convicted in February of the first-degree murder of Chesna, 42, and the second-degree murder of Adams, 77. It was the second trial after a first one ended in mistrial last summer after jurors deliberated for weeks with no verdict.
Lopes was also convicted on two counts of assault to kill two other police officers at the Weymouth scene, assault with a dangerous weapon (a rock) on Chesna, carrying a firearm without a license, larceny of a firearm, leaving the scene of an accident causing property damage, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, use of a motor vehicle without authorization, and malicious destruction of property of a value less than $1,200. Lopes was initially arraigned in November 2018, in which Chesna’s widow Cindy Chesna called him “a piece of (expletive).”
Following the victim impact statements at Wednesday hearing, prosecutor Gregory Connor asked for the maximum sentence possible for each of the murders: two life sentences to be served consecutively, with parole after 30 years for the first-degree murder of Chesna and after 25 years for the second-degree murder of Adams, meaning Lopes would be 75 or 76 years old by the time he was eligible for parole.
Cannone structured the life sentence so that Lopes would be eligible for parole after 40 years, representing 30 for the first degree murder of Chesna, plus another 10 years for the second degree murder of Adams.
Defense attorney Tipton asked that the life sentences be concurrent and that Lopes be eligible for parole after 25 years. Tipton said that not once in the thousands of pages of records developed since the murders has his client ever denigrated the police or the victims and has repeatedly said he was sorry. Tipton argued case law and recent Supreme Judicial Court decisions on sentences for “emerging adults,” which Lopes was at the time of the murders, citing brain psychology on the matter: “We have to consider all of the science … how that impacts a person’s ability like Mr. Lopes, because of his brain which was not fully developed.”
The slayings took place in the early hours of July 15, 2008, following a summer day in which, prosecutors say, Lopes was hanging out with friends and getting along until he got a call from a man who had previously been involved with his girlfriend. Lopes’ reaction to this call — which Tipton argued during trial showed Lopes’ long history of mental illness and thus a lack of criminal responsibility — is the beginning of the mayhem.
As the night turned into early morning, Lopes took his girlfriend’s white BMW and crashed it into another vehicle by South Shore Hospital and fled the scene. Witnesses called police to report Lopes’ erratic driving and then to also report that he was throwing rocks in a residential neighborhood.
When Chesna located Lopes, he saw the man with a large rock in his hands and ordered him to drop it. Instead, Lopes threw the rock at Chesna’s head, walked over to the downed officer, grabbed his service pistol and shot him five times in the head and chest.
Another officer shot at Lopes through the police cruiser window, striking Lopes in the leg. Police would soon apprehend him and then find Adams shot and killed as she sat on her nearby porch.
Lopes’ sentencing includes credit for the 6 years he has already spent in jail for the cold-blooded killings.
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