© 2023
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations

Healey to appeal dismissal of charges in Holyoke Soldiers' Home case

Holyoke Soldiers' Home
WAMC
/
Holyoke Soldiers' Home

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced her office will appeal a judge’s decision to dismiss all criminal charges against two former administrators at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, where at least 76 veterans died last year in a COVID-19 outbreak.

In a statement Tuesday, Healey said “The tragic loss of life at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home broke the promise that our Commonwealth would honor these men who bravely served our country. We are filing this notice of appeal today to pursue accountability on behalf of their loved ones and communities.”

A grand jury last year indicted former superintendent Bennett Walsh and former medical director Dr. David Clinton on ten counts each.

Last month, Hampden Superior Court Judge Edward McDonough dismissed the charges, ruling there was “insufficient reasonably trustworthy evidence.”

William Bennett, an attorney for Walsh, reserved comment until the motion for an appeal is filed and he can review it.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.
Related Content