DEDHAM — Following nearly two weeks of deliberations, a Norfolk Superior Court judge on Monday declared a mistrial in the case of the man accused of killing a Weymouth woman and police officer nearly five years ago.
The jury, which was bused in from Worcester, was tasked with determining whether Emanuel Lopes, 25, was mentally incapacitated when he fatally shot Sergeant Michael Chesna and Vera Adams, 77, on the morning of July 15, 2018. The jury failed to reach a consensus.
Lopes was facing two counts of first-degree murder, and will be retried at a later date. He will remain in jail while awaiting a new trial, the date for which could be decided as soon as July 21.
The Norfolk district attorney’s office would not comment on the mistrial.
Nearly an hour after Judge Beverly J. Cannone’s announcement of a mistrial, family members of the victims were rushed off to their cars; they declined to comment.
Speaking outside the courthouse Monday, Weymouth police Chief Richard Fuller said, “we will have justice.”
“I’m speaking for everyone here — we are extremely disappointed,” said Fuller. “No family should have to endure what this family has endured.”
Richard Grimes, who was Weymouth’s chief of police at the time of the killings, added: “It’s just justice delayed. It’s just a speed bump.”
Lopes, a Weymouth resident, was indicted on 11 charges including murder in September 2018, two months after his arrest. Prosecutors said that on the morning of the shootings, Lopes stole his girlfriend’s car, crashed into a Toyota Camry on a main road in Weymouth, and fled the scene of the accident into a nearby neighborhood.
After throwing a rock through the window of a home, Lopes encountered Chesna, who tried to apprehend him. But Lopes hurled another rock at Chesna’s head, knocking him unconscious, prosecutors said. He then shot Chesna multiple times with the sergeant’s own gun before shooting at other officers and running away with the gun in hand toward a neighbor’s home, prosecutors said. There, he shot Adams while she sat on her porch, prosecutors said.
In closing arguments on June 28, both sides acknowledged the horrific nature of the killings, but attempted to sway the jury toward one of two conclusions: The killings were intentional, or Lopes’s mental illness prevented him from fully understanding the wrongness of his alleged actions that day.
If jurors concluded Lopes was not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, he would have been sent to Bridgewater State Hospital or another mental health facility, where he could have remained for the rest of his life. If they convicted him of first-degree murder, Lopes would automatically be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Defense attorney Larry Tipton argued that Lopes suffered from schizo-affective disorder, a condition similar to schizophrenia, at the time of the shootings. He aimed to turn jurors’ attention away from Lopes’s longtime cannabis use, and to portray his behavior instead as “the product of a person in psychosis.”
“This behavior was not drug-related,” he said. “This is the story of a man with mental health problems.”
On a screen behind him, images flashed by in rapid succession for the jury, highlighting excerpts of conversations between Lopes and his mother, or between his girlfriend, Mary Cronin, and the police. Tipton also played audio of Cronin’s 911 call the morning of the shooting, in which she tells police that Lopes had “been going crazy.”
Tipton repeated several of Lopes’s statements, including talk of the Illuminati, concerns that “people were trying to kill him,” and mutterings that he was “an alien from outer space.” He argued that, while Lopes probably comprehended that he had shot and killed Chesna and Adams, jurors should conclude based on testimony from expert witnesses that Lopes did not understand that it was wrong in the moment.
“Someone can have knowledge of their behavior but not appreciate it,” he said. And “to try to understand what Mr. Lopes meant is an exercise in futility ... because he is psychotic.”
However, Assistant District Attorney Gregory P. Connor pointed to another expert witness who determined that Lopes was instead suffering from borderline personality disorder and antisocial disorder. Neither of those conditions, Connor told jurors, should prevent the defendant from being held criminally responsible for his actions.
Challenging Tipton’s characterization of the defendant’s behavior, Connor replayed footage from a convenience store security camera of the night before the shootings, when Lopes appeared to behave normally.
“Are these real delusions or ... are these attempts at getting attention?” Connor asked jurors, gesturing at the footage behind him. “Is this really the moment right before it hits critical mass, and the straw is going to break the camel’s back?”
Reminding jurors of the way Lopes crashed his girlfriend’s stolen car “going 80 miles an hour” before fleeing east into a nearby neighborhood, Connor again asked the question: “Is that psychosis, or is that a person who’s made a tremendous mistake?”
As he walked the jury through the events of that July morning a final time, Connor lifted up the same rock that Lopes hurled at Chesna’s head, pantomiming the motion of throwing the rock forward before letting it rest with an echoing thud on the table.
“It requires aim; it requires volition,” he said. He went on to describe how Lopes took Chesna’s gun and fired it at the cruiser, before shooting Chesna repeatedly as he lay on the ground.
“He knows now it’s a working firearm ... and he shot Sergeant Chesna four times,” Connor said.
Connor then reminded jurors that Lopes proceeded to shoot Adams twice through a window, an action that Connor argued was intended to kill a witness to Lopes’s earlier crime.
“That is felony murder, and it is with deliberate premeditation,” Connor said, imploring the jury to hold Lopes criminally responsible for both deaths. “Ladies and gentlemen, this man knows what he did. His life is forever changed, and so are the lives of Michael Chesna and Vera Adams.”
Ivy Scott can be reached at ivy.scott@globe.com. Follow her @itsivyscott. Elllie Wolfe can be reached at ellie.wolfe@globe.com. Follow her @elliew0lfe.