Trial starts for ex-Marshfield student charged in plot

February 11, 2008 03:19 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

(Tom Landers/Globe Staff/File 2004)

Joseph Nee, seen in 2004, is charged with planning a Columbine-style attack at Marshfield High.

By Emily Sweeney, Globe Staff

A lawyer for a former student accused of planning an attack at Marshfield High School told a judge today that his client deserves the same immunity that prosecutors gave to his two classmates who are planning to testify against him.

Joseph Nee went to police in the fall of 2004 with two friends -- Daniel Farley and Joseph Sullivan -- and told officers that another classmate was plotting a deadly attack at the school, said Nee’s lawyer, Thomas Drechsler. They told authorities that the student, Tobin "Toby" Kerns, had masterminded a plan to shoot students and staff.

After Kerns's arrest, Farley and Sullivan told police that Nee had actually orchestrated the plot. Nee was arrested and prosecutors agreed not to charge his friends if they testified against him at trial.

“Mr. Nee didn’t do anything that Mr. Farley and Mr. Sullivan didn’t do,” Drechsler said today during his opening statement in Plymouth Superior Court. “My client deserves the same outcome as Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Farley.”

Nee waived his right to a jury and has opted for a bench trial before Judge Charles M. Grabau. He has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, promotion of anarchy, and threatening to use deadly weapons at school.

Prosecutor Karen O’Sullivan said today in her opening statement that Nee and Kerns plotted the attack together. The plan, O’Sullivan said, had actually been initiated by Nee.

Kerns was brought to trial in October 2006 and was found guilty of threatening to use deadly weapons and conspiracy to commit murder. In November 2007 he was sentenced to 10 months in jail, with credit for the time he served in the juvenile lockup. He is being held at the Plymouth House of Correction.

Nee, 21, has been free on $20,000 cash bail since January 2005 on the condition he stay away from witnesses in the case, stay away from Marshfield schools and school-related events, undergo random drug testing, and obey a curfew.

Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com.