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Police now hot on the trail of a serial shoplifter at the downtown Woolworth's
By adamg on Tue, 08/16/2011 - 11:51pm
File this under: Wheels of justice grinding slowly. A Roxbury man was arraigned on drunk-driving charges today following his arrest by a Metropolitan Police officer - more than 22 years ago.
Richard Matthews, now 67, didn't show up for his arraignment after his arrest in what was then the Dewey Square tunnel at the end of the Central Artery early in the morning of Jan. 12, 1989 for OUI, operating without a license, insurance or registration and attaching a 1975 Corolla's plates to his 1977 Buick station wagon, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
The DA's office says the Metro Police officer stopped him in the tunnel after noticing him slowly drifting across three lanes of the highway. Two years later, Metro Police disappeared, its officers merged into the State Police.
Matthews got tripped up not by modern forensic techniques but by a document in a folder that had been gathering dust for all these years, coupled with a more recent arrest, the DA's office reports.
The case and his default status went unnoticed until Friday, when he appeared in Roxbury District Court in connection with a pending case charging him with trespassing and soliciting sex for a fee. Upon learning of the open OUI case, the judge there ordered him to appear in Charlestown to answer on the 1989 matter.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
What is the statute of limitations for drunk driving?
Not that it's a minor offense, but I'm surprised that it is still possible to prosecute such a case 22 years after the crime.
Would that apply?
This is a bit different than if they suddenly charged him after 22 years. He was charged the morning of the alleged incident and then skipping out. Is there a statute of limitations on being a fugitive from justice?
I'm thinking it would be analogous to the case the DA's office brought against a then unknown rape suspect to stop the statute of limitations from running out (they charged whoever the DNA they found at a rape scene belonged to; last year, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld this concept).
Warrant stops the statute of limitations
I agree Adam, the SOL pertains to the amount of time allowed to bring charges and since the charge was brought immediately and warrant issued when he defaulted, the SOL isn't an issue. In practical terms though, even if the D.A. decides to go forward on an old misdemeanor like this (many times they'll just nolle prosse it), most of the Metropolitan (MDC) Police who merged with MSP are now retired and a good few are deceased, so there's a pretty good chance the guy escapes prosecution because the arresting officer/witness is no longer available. That said, the Mets had some pretty big academy classes under Dukakis in the 1980s (critics claimed MDC meant Mike Dukakis Cops) and a number of those troopers are still around, many with high rank now.
If you're charged there is no
If you're charged there is no statute of limitations. Some jurisdictions have used this to stop the clock on rape cases by charging the DNA profiles of unknown offenders.
And STAY OUT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy2p9kNnnyg
That's a bad day right there.
That's a bad day right there.
So where does the shoplifting
So where does the shoplifting charge come in?
Sorry, it was a (perhaps poor) attempt at a joke
The fact they charged this guy for an alleged crime two decades ago on a road that no longer exists, after being arrested by an officer for a department that ceased to be, got me to thinking what other sorts of miscreants are still out there from Olde Boston. This particular suspect is not charged with shoplifting.
Much of the original Dewey Square tunnel
was directly incorporated into what are now the southbound lanes of the current O'Neill Tunnel between the Purchase Street off-ramp and the south portal. So the roadway still exists, although in a different form.