The summer of courtroom dramas has begun. In Massachusetts, the Bella Bond murder trial entered its second week. 37-year-old Michael McCarthy is charged with first-degree murder, accused of beating the two-year-old girl to death and then dumping her body in the ocean. Bond’s remains washed up on Deer Island two years ago this month and it took investigators months to identify her. McCarthy was the boyfriend of the toddler's mother, Rachelle Bond, who was charged as an accessory after the fact and cut a deal with prosecutors in exchange for her testimony. The defense claims it was she who killed the little girl.
Also in Massachusetts, opening statements start tomorrow in the trial of Michelle Carter – the teenager accused of persuading a friend to kill himself. Jury selection was supposed to start today for Michelle Carter but this morning, she decided on a bench trial. That means a judge, not a jury, will hear her case. The now-19-year-old Carter is charged with involuntary manslaughter, accused of persuading 18-year-old Conrad Roy to kill himself in a series of texts and phone calls in 2014. Roy ultimately died from carbon monoxide poisoning after he connected a generator to his truck's exhaust system following a phone call with Carter, in which she told him to get back in the truck after he began to express doubts about his plan.
In Pennsylvania, the trial of Bill Cosby began today in a case that dates back to 2004, when a Temple University employee says the actor drugged and sexually assaulted her. The 79-year-old Cosby maintains the sexual contact was consensual. In all, more than 50 women have made claims that Cosby had unwanted sexual contact with them. But this is the only criminal case that has come from those accusations.
Stephanie Soriano, a former prosecutor, now a criminal and civil rights attorney and principal at Soriano and Associates, and Jack Cunha, defense attorney and principal with Cunha and Holcomb, joined Jim Braude.
