SJC won't force Marzilli arraignment

February 10, 2009 02:11 PM Email| Comments (2)| Text size – +

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

A woman who said she was sexually assaulted by former state representative J. James Marzilli Jr. has lost her legal battle to get him arraigned on indecent assault and battery charges.

The state Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that the woman, who had asked a magistrate to issue a criminal complaint against Marzilli, had no right to insist that Marzilli be arraigned after the complaint was issued. Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. decided to drop the charges before Marzilli was arraigned.

"A private party's rights with respect to the criminal complaint process are limited to the filing of an application and court action on that application. Once a private party alerts the court of the alleged criminal activity through the filing of an application and the court responds to that application, the private party's rights have been satisfied," the court said, quoting an earlier ruling.

Attorney Wendy Murphy said her client had sought an arraignment to ensure that the charges showed up on Marzilli's record.

"We thought it was important as a matter of public safety," she said.

Middlesex prosecutors are still pressing charges against Marzilli in the case of four other women who were allegedly assaulted in Lowell.

"Every decision we have made has been about doing the right thing based on the facts and the law," a spokesman for the district attorney, Corey Welford, said in a statement. "With today’s decision, the state’s highest court has ruled that we have done just that."

Welford also noted that prosecutors had "taken the significant step of indicting Mr. Marzilli for accosting multiple women in Lowell and continue to move forward with our prosecution of Mr. Marzilli on behalf of the victims in that case."

The woman alleged that Marzilli drove her to her Arlington home from a fund-raiser in April and, while standing in her kitchen, grabbed her breast and crotch, Murphy said. But Leone said in August that there wasn't enough evidence to prove the woman's case "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is the standard in criminal cases.

Marzilli's lawyer, Terrence Kennedy of Everett, didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.