Entwistle publicity seen as fairness issue

As Neil Entwistle returns to Massachusetts in the state's most closely watched murder case in years, the family of the wife and baby he is accused of killing is preparing to face him in a courtroom for the first time since the slayings.

Joseph and Priscilla Matterazzo want to witness the arraignment of their 27-year-old son-in-law, said Joseph Flaherty, a family spokesman.

Federal marshals are expected to return Entwistle to Massachusetts as early as today from London, where Scotland Yard said last night that he is ''still in custody pending extradition." He is expected to be booked at the Hopkinton police station on two first-degree murder charges and be arraigned later in Framingham District Court. The unemployed electrical engineer was arrested last week in London and agreed not to fight extradition.

With the publicity surrounding the case, several legal specialists said yesterday that it will be difficult for Entwistle to get a fair trial, particularly after a judge unsealed police affidavits this week that detail much of prosecutors' evidence said to support allegations that he shot Rachel and 9-month-old Lillian in their Hopkinton home last month.

The lawyers said they were appalled that Framingham District Judge Robert V. Greco made public 151 pages of affidavits that allege, among other things, that during the week of the killings Neil Entwistle surfed the Internet for websites that describe how to kill people.

''I think it's shocking, absolutely shocking," said Charles Rankin, a well-known criminal defense lawyer and one of the overseers of the state public defender agency. ''It just feeds more stories in the media and makes it harder to eventually find a jury that hasn't heard in excruciating detail the Commonwealth's version of events that hasn't been tested by any adversary process."

Jeffrey B. Abramson, a specialist on juries and a former Middlesex County prosecutor who teaches legal studies at Brandeis University, said that relentless news coverage of the killings and Neil Entwistle's flight to his native England already made it hard to find a fair and impartial jury. With the release of the affidavits, which also described alleged Internet searches by Neil Entwistle for paid escorts, Abramson said he could not fathom how that can ever be done.

Greco unsealed the affidavits Monday, over prosecutors' objections, after news organizations, including the Globe, sought their release because of intense public interest in the case. The judge said he had to balance the rights of all the parties in the case, privacy concerns, and the ''extent of community interest." Based on those factors, he unsealed the documents after ordering a few details blacked out.

Greco declined comment yesterday through a spokeswoman who said the judge cannot discuss a pending case.

Few criminal cases get the kind of public attention that the Entwistles' slayings have, so the question of whether reporters can review search warrants seldom becomes an issue. In the minority of cases where journalists seek access to the documents, the judges often seal them, sometimes until after a defendant is arraigned, other times for months, said several defense lawyers.

But Greco unsealed the affidavits before Neil Entwistle even returned to the United States.

''I think it's outrageous," defense lawyer Rosemary Curran Scapicchio said, adding that the judge should have at least waited until Neil Entwistle had been arraigned and had a lawyer who could object to release of the documents.

Neil Entwistle was represented by a London lawyer, Judith Seddon, at a hearing last week in which he agreed not to fight extradition. But it remains unclear who will represent him when he returns to Massachusetts.

Top officials at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state's public defender agency, said yesterday that no one has contacted them on Neil Entwistle's behalf to say he is indigent and needs a court-appointed lawyer, although they are preparing for that possibility.

Another criminal lawyer, Robert A. George, said he believes that release of the documents will irreparably prejudice the jury pool, even if a year or two passes before the case goes to trial.

''No juror who has been exposed to this will ever be able to put it out of their minds," he said. ''Do you think they're going to forget that [Entwistle] supposedly was surfing the Web for murder and suicide sites? I'm certainly never going to forget it."

Another defense lawyer, John H. Cunha Jr., agreed, saying that the ''pretrial publicity has been as bad as anything I've ever seen, and I've been practicing close to 30 years."

But some lawyers said the wall-to-wall news coverage of the case on national cable television and the Internet and in newspapers and magazines will probably die down after he is arraigned. Those lawyers also pointed out that judges presiding over other high-profile criminal cases in Massachusetts and elsewhere have been able to find impartial juries despite intense media scrutiny.

''I'm very confident that, in Massachusetts, the trial judge is going to do everything to make sure he gets a fair trial and a fair jury," said retired Superior Court Judge John M. Xifaras. ''There are some people who don't watch TV, don't listen to the radio, and don't read the newspaper. He can get a fair trial."

John R. Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com; Kocian at lkocian@globe.com