Pill-popping Dedham cop to spend 6 to 9 in state prison for lending his badge, gun holster and handcuffs to his drug dealer, who used them in a kidnapping that ended in murder

The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld a Dedham police officers conviction for being an accessory before the fact to a kidnapping, saying it didn't buy his argument he thought his drug dealer was just going to use his badge, handcuffs and gun holster as part of a joke or some mild bondage with his girlfriend any more than the jury that convicted him did.

In an appeal of his conviction related to the 2014 kidnapping and murder of James Robertson, then Dedham officer Michael Schoener argued that Norfolk County prosecutors failed to prove that he knew the man who had been selling him Percocet pills for more than two year asked him to let him borrow Schoener's badge, cuffs and holster for something as sinister as a kidnapping, let alone a kidnapping that would end in the victim's murder. According to the court's summary of the case:

When the defendant was asked why he thought Feeney [the drug dealer convicted of the murder] wanted his handcuffs, the defendant said, "I think he just implied that it might have been, I didn't really ask him. I thought they were for his girlfriend or something, you know." Even though he thought that Feeney already owned handcuffs, the defendant gave the handcuffs to Feeney. When Feeney asked for the holster, the defendant explained that he thought that Feeney "was just kind of like joking about it, you know. I mean, I didn't, I wasn't thinking right. . . . I was addicted to pills so I just was trying to keep my avenues of getting those open, I guess, and I wasn't thinking right."

The defendant brought the items to Feeney the next time that he was at Feeney's apartment, a few days before New Year's Day 2014. Feeney did not mention his purpose in requesting them and did not mention the victim. The defendant explained before the grand jury that Feeney "said he wasn't going to do, you know. He just didn't really imply anything, so I didn't. I just wasn't thinking." The defendant added that he did not receive anything, such as Percocet pills or money, for allowing Feeney the use of the equipment, but that he gave Feeney the items in an attempt to protect his means for purchasing Percocet pills.

In its ruling, the state's highest court didn't buy it for a second. The court said that based on the evidence, Schoener knew Feeney had a grudge against the man, in part because the man had broken into Feeney's car in Dedham, that Feeney had asked him to call up the man's prison and RMV records and that Feeney was a drug dealer who owned guns. Add it all up, there aren't really many reasons why a drug dealer would ask a cop to borrow the items he did, the court concluded.

Our review is limited to determining whether the loan of the handcuffs, taken together with the badge, the holster, and the victim's BOP records and driver's license information, provided sufficient evidence to support a finding that the defendant intended the handcuffs be used to confine another. See Winding v. State, 908 So. 2d 163, 171 (Miss. Ct. App. 2005) (evidence of handcuffs was probative of testimony that defendant masqueraded as police officer in order to kidnap). We conclude that it did.

The defendant lent the police equipment to Feeney within a few months of the victim's attempted break-in of Feeney's vehicle and less than one month after the defendant's having obtained the victim's BOP [Bureau of Prison] records. Moreover, the defendant lent Feeney the police equipment soon after Feeney gave him free Percocet pills. Where Feeney said that he "just want[ed] to use [the items]," the jury reasonably could have concluded, from the nature of the police equipment and Feeney's demonstrated hostility to the victim, that the defendant provided those items with a willingness that Feeney use them to restrain, unlawfully and with force, a person he was targeting (as indicated by the request for the victim's BOP and RMV records). See Commonwealth v. Noble, 417 Mass. 341, 346 (1994) (circumstantial evidence was sufficient to show that defendant knew of perpetrator's intent to seek revenge against victim, and aided perpetrator's plan by providing disguise).

And so the jury made a rational decision that Schoener knew that Feeney would use the items for a kidnapping, "given the specific crime of kidnapping, the defendant's knowledge of Feeney's hostility toward the victim, and the combination of the particular items provided by the defendant," the court concluded.