Judge sentences Mark Kerrigan to 2½ years in jail

The judge also heard from Brenda Kerrigan, Daniel Kerrigan’s widow. Brenda Kerrigan’s sister read the victim impact statement. In it, Brenda Kerrigan faulted Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. and his decision to prosecute her son. She also criticized Leone for saying on Wednesday that the last thing Daniel Kerrigan saw before he died was the angry face of Mark Kerrigan.

“I have lost my husband and for the last 16 months, have had only a shadow of my son,’’ Brenda Kerrigan said in the statement. “I never wanted this trial, or charges or any attention paid to what happens within my family.’’

She added, “The Commonwealth insisted and even after the verdict, they are still taking shots at my son and my family. … I was the last person my husband looked at before he passed away.’’

Nancy Kerrigan also spoke and urged Haggerty “to please send him home with us today so he can rejoin our family.''

Haggerty's sentence clearly disappointed the Kerrigan clan. As she was leaving the courtroom, Brenda Kerrigan said that the post-release conditions Kerrigan imposed will be a burden for her son. "He won't ever be able to work,'' she said.

Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Keeley, who had urged the judge to impose the maximum, called the sentencing “fair and reasonable.’’

She said she felt sympathy for the Kerrigans, but their support of Mark Kerrigan has proven ineffective.

“Their efforts to help him and to support him have not worked,’’ Keeley said. “He is a grown man and has to be held accountable.’’

In court today, defense attorney Janice Bassil said the Kerrigan family is well aware that Mark Kerrigan has mental health issues, and yet they are still anxious to welcome him home. She urged the judge to sentence him to time served and order that he receive mental health care as a condition of probation.

Bassil also said prosecutors are trying to circumvent the jury’s decision to acquit Mark Kerrigan of the most serious charge he faced, manslaughter.

“I think the Commonwealth’s recommendation is vindictive because they did not prevail,’’ Bassil said in court. “It is a slap in the jury’s face.’’

Leone on Wednesday had expressed satisfaction at the conviction, even though it was on the lesser charge.

“When a defendant commits criminal conduct the way this defendant did, they need to be held responsible and accountable, and this verdict holds Mark Kerrigan accountable and responsible for beating his 70-year-old father,’’ he said at a press conference at the courthouse.

Prosecutors had argued that Mark Kerrigan, 46, fought with his father in a late-night, alcohol-fueled argument over the use of the family’s telephone, grabbing him by the neck, crushing the cartilage there, and triggering his heart failure.

Keeley said in her closing argument Monday that the son’s “actions set into motion a natural and continuous sequence of events that led to Daniel Kerrigan’s death.’’

After the verdict Wednesday, Leone said, “If it were not for the actions of this defendant, we would not be here today, and Mr. Kerrigan would not have died in the manner that he did on the floor of his home. This verdict speaks to the actions of an angry, belligerent, highly intoxicated 45-year-old man who cared more about himself and his selfish desires than his 70-year-old father.’’

Bassil said in her closing argument that the prosecution had failed to prove its case. She suggested that the elder Kerrigan’s heart failure began before he started grappling with his son, adding that he had a long history of coronary artery disease, which was so advanced that three of four major arteries to his heart were almost fully blocked with fatty deposits when he died.

Bassil conceded that Mark Kerrigan told police he had grabbed his father by the neck, but she told jurors that they could not rely on what he said that night, because he was drunk.

“I would have liked a not-guilty verdict on everything,’’ Bassil said. “I don’t think the government proved its case. I’m glad the jury saw the truth, that there was no manslaughter here, there was no killing here, and they convicted him of the least charge they could.’’

She added: “It was going to boil down to the facts, the science, and the medicine, and that’s what the jury understood. . . . This has been an enormous ordeal for Nancy and particularly her mother.’’

Police were first called to the family’s house early in the evening of Jan. 23, 2010, after a woman said Mark Kerrigan was harassing her and would not allow her to leave, prosecutors said. Daniel Kerrigan, who was eating dinner with his wife at his sister’s home, returned early to try to calm his son, prosecutors said.

Over the next several hours, prosecutors said Mark Kerrigan guzzled a bottle of Scotch and repeatedly argued with his parents, who refused to allow him to use the phone to call the woman.

They said that sometime after midnight, Mark Kerrigan began screaming obscenities and yelling about the telephone not working. His parents, who were asleep, put on their clothes and went downstairs to the kitchen to talk to their son.

Prosecutors have said the conversation escalated into a violent physical altercation, in which the son “pushed, grabbed, and shoved’’ his father, causing a compression fracture to the left thyroid cartilage of his larynx.

Daniel Kerrigan was pronounced dead that night at Winchester Hospital.
The trial featured tearful testimony by Brenda Kerrigan, who disputed that the confrontation between her son and husband, which she witnessed, was a fight. Brenda Kerrigan is legally blind.

She said the two had been in what appeared to be a bear hug, for less than 10 seconds, when Daniel Kerrigan collapsed. She said she never saw Mark with his hands on his father’s neck.

Mrs. Kerrigan twice sat through the playing of the 911 tape from that night, which featured her frantic voice reporting the trouble in her home.

After the closing arguments, jurors deliberated four hours on Monday, then eight hours on Tuesday, before resuming deliberations for about three hours Wednesday.