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Salem News
February 28, 2015
As a Salem judge considers whether to suppress accused killer Philip Chism’s confession in the death of teacher Colleen Ritzer, his lawyers say they’re considering mounting a so-called insanity defense.
Chism’s attorneys also planning to ask that the trial, now set for Oct. 7, be moved out of Essex County, his lawyer said in court.
Chism, now 16, is charged in the Oct. 22, 2013 rape and murder of Ritzer, 24, of Andover. Police say he attacked Ritzer inside a girls’ bathroom at Danvers High School and then in a wooded area near the school, where her body was found early the following day.
Salem Superior Court Judge David Lowy said he could rule as early as Friday on a motion seeking to suppress Chism’s confession to police, deciding whether the teen understood what he was doing when he agreed to speak to investigators at the Topsfield and Danvers police stations shortly after he was found walking alone on Route 1.
Chism’s lawyers said he did not. Police coerced him into talking they said, ignoring what they contend is his mother’s request for a lawyer (something prosecutors argue she did not have standing to request) and Chism’s initial reluctance to speak.
“What the commonwealth is asking the court to do is violate the Fifth Amendment,” argued John Osler, one of Chism’s three lawyers.
Eager to talk?
But prosecutor Kate MacDougall said it’s clear that Chism did understand — and that he was actually eager to talk.
“They have someone who seems willing to talk,” said the prosecutor. “He had his story to tell, he was going to tell the parts he wanted to tell and not tell them the parts he didn’t.”
The judge seemed to share that view.
Referring to a video that remains under seal while Chism’s attorneys appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court to block its release, Lowy said Chism told police that Ritzer used a “trigger word” that set him off while the two were in the girls bathroom.
But Chism refused to say what that word was, the judge noted. “I don’t know how many times the defendant (was) asked,” said Lowy to the prosecutor. “I didn’t count them. Perhaps you did.”
MacDougall said Chism was asked at least three times, and also was offered the opportunity to write it down. But he refused, and it’s not clear that investigators have any idea what that purported “trigger word” was.
