Update, September 23, 2026. CORRECTION. Two statements in this piece were overtaken by what happened at the September 22 hearing. First, the defense expert on racial bias did not testify that day. Retired State Police Lt. Brian Tully was unavailable, and the expert is now expected on November 30, if Judge Krupp allows the testimony. Second, this piece described Judge Krupp as having found that Proctor’s Fifth Amendment privilege would be properly exercised, which was accurate as of last week but is not the final word: Rosemary Scapicchio said after Tuesday’s hearing that Krupp has requested additional documents from Proctor’s lawyer before ruling finally, and Proctor could still be compelled to testify. What did happen on September 22 was a third day of testimony from Adam Lally about undisclosed search warrants and DNA evidence, which we cover in this report. The hearing continues November 30, and King goes to trial in January if the case is not dismissed.
Rosemary Scapicchio is asking a Norfolk Superior Court judge to throw out a murder indictment because the trooper who built the case is a racist. No Massachusetts court has ever dismissed an indictment on that ground. The hearing on it resumed Tuesday in Dedham with a defense expert on racial bias in investigations.
That is what makes Commonwealth v. King worth watching whatever happens in it. Judge Peter Krupp is being asked to do something the case law does not yet provide for, and the reasoning he uses will be the template for every one of the cases the State Police say Michael Proctor touched.
The case
Myles Omari King, 26, is charged with the July 2021 shooting death of Marquis Simmons in Milton. Proctor, then assigned to the Norfolk District Attorney’s office, was the lead investigator. King is Black. He has pleaded not guilty.
Scapicchio’s motion to dismiss rests on two grounds, and they are not the same kind of argument.
The first is conventional: Proctor’s handling of search warrants and the late production of evidence, including warrants disclosed only after a new prosecutor took the case. Krupp had already taken the case off the trial list, ordered the Commonwealth to complete its disclosure, and released King on bail.
The second is the novel one. Court filings in the Karen Read litigation have produced years of messages in which Proctor used slurs for Black people, women and Jewish people. Scapicchio argues that bias of that kind and duration irreparably tainted an investigation of a Black defendant, and that no remedy short of dismissal cures it.
On August 27 the former lead prosecutor, Norfolk Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally, was back on the stand. Scapicchio asked whether he had been aware of any biases or racist beliefs held by Proctor. “No, that was never communicated to me,” Lally answered.
What the law gives her, and where it stops
Massachusetts recognizes dismissal of an indictment as a remedy for government misconduct, but treats it as close to a last resort.
Commonwealth v. Lewin, 405 Mass. 566 (1989), is the case defense lawyers cite for the proposition that a court may dismiss where police misconduct is egregious enough. Commonwealth v. O’Dell, 392 Mass. 445 (1984), and Commonwealth v. Mayfield, 398 Mass. 615 (1986), address dismissal where the integrity of the grand jury proceeding was impaired by what was presented to it. All of those cases share a structure: identify specific conduct, show it affected the proceeding, and show prejudice that cannot be cured by a lesser remedy such as suppression, a new grand jury, or an instruction.
That structure is what makes the bias argument hard. It is not enough to establish that the investigator held repugnant views. The motion has to connect those views to particular investigative decisions in King’s case, and then show that the resulting prejudice cannot be fixed by anything short of ending the prosecution.
The closest thing to a precedent is about traffic stops
The framework that comes nearest is Commonwealth v. Long, SJC-12868, decided September 17, 2020, and it is worth reading carefully because both its promise and its limits are on the same page.
In Long, the Supreme Judicial Court rewrote how a defendant proves that a stop was racially motivated. It held that “a defendant seeking to suppress evidence based on a claim that a traffic stop violated principles of equal protection bears the burden of establishing, by motion, a reasonable inference that the officer’s decision to initiate the stop was motivated by race or another protected class.” The defendant “must point to specific facts from the totality of the circumstances surrounding the stop,” and, in the sentence that changed practice, “the inference need not be based in statistical analysis.” The court said plainly that in Commonwealth v. Lora, 451 Mass. 425 (2008), it had “set the bar too high,” because producing adequate statistics “has proved infeasible for defendants.” Once the inference is raised, the burden shifts to the Commonwealth to rebut it, and absent a successful rebuttal the evidence is suppressed.
Scapicchio is asking Krupp to take that logic two steps further. Long is about a single decision, the decision to initiate a stop. This motion is about an entire homicide investigation. And Long‘s remedy is suppression of what the stop produced. This motion asks for dismissal of the whole indictment. Neither extension is foreclosed by Long. Neither is supplied by it either.
The Fifth Amendment problem
On September 15, Proctor appeared, went to sidebar with his lawyer, and told Krupp he would invoke the Fifth Amendment if called. Krupp found the privilege would be properly exercised. Scapicchio said afterward that Proctor’s lawyer had indicated shortly before the hearing that he would testify.
That invocation costs the defense more than it costs the Commonwealth, and the reason is structural. Proctor is not a party. In a criminal case, a factfinder is generally not invited to draw an adverse inference against the prosecution from a non-party witness’s assertion of the privilege. So Scapicchio cannot examine the one person who could connect the documented bias to specific choices in King’s investigation, and she gets no inference from his silence either.
That is why the expert matters.
What an expert on racial bias is actually for
An expert cannot testify that Proctor was biased. The messages do that, and it is not a subject requiring expertise. What an expert can do is explain how bias operates in investigative decision-making: which leads get pursued, which get closed, how a suspect is selected early and how confirmation then shapes what follows. That testimony gives Krupp a basis to reason from documented bias to investigative effect without the investigator’s own testimony.
Admissibility is governed by the reliability standard the SJC adopted in Commonwealth v. Lanigan, 419 Mass. 15 (1994), which is the Massachusetts version of Daubert. As the SJC reminded everyone again this week in a different case, the proponent has to show the methodology is reliable as applied to the specific question the expert proposes to answer. Whether a general body of research on investigative bias can be applied reliably to one 2021 homicide file is exactly the fight.
The Commonwealth’s position, stated fairly
The prosecution’s argument is not that Proctor’s messages are defensible. It is that bias in a text thread does not make the evidence false. The shell casings, the phone records and the witness accounts are what they are regardless of who collected them, and the ordinary remedies for an investigator’s credibility problem are cross-examination and, where evidence was withheld, suppression or a new trial rather than immunity from prosecution. Lally’s testimony that the bias was never communicated to him cuts against a claim that prosecutors knowingly built on a tainted foundation. And dismissing a murder indictment ends the case for a family that has waited five years.
Those are serious points, and Krupp has to answer them to grant this motion.
Why the ruling travels
State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble said in July that Proctor had worked “hundreds, if not thousands” of cases and that every one needed to be looked at. The Committee for Public Counsel Services has called for a review of all of them, open and closed. The Norfolk District Attorney has said it is reviewing cases. No list has been published and no other case has produced a public ruling.
King is first. If Krupp writes an opinion that connects documented investigator bias to a remedy, whatever that remedy is, he will be writing the standard every other defendant uses. If he denies the motion and explains why bias alone is not enough, he writes the wall those defendants run into.
What is not yet known
As of publication, what happened at Tuesday’s session has not been reported. Krupp was not expected to rule from the bench. We will update this piece when the outcome is reported.
Who is Myles King?
Myles Omari King, 26, is charged with the July 2021 shooting death of Marquis Simmons in Milton. He has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. Michael Proctor was the lead investigator.
What is the motion asking for?
Dismissal of the indictment, on two grounds: Proctor’s handling of search warrants and late disclosure of evidence, and the claim that his documented racial bias tainted the investigation of a Black defendant beyond any lesser remedy.
Has a Massachusetts court ever dismissed a case for investigator bias?
Not that we have found. Dismissal for government misconduct exists as a remedy under cases like Commonwealth v. Lewin, but those turn on specific conduct affecting the proceeding and prejudice that cannot be cured otherwise.
What does Commonwealth v. Long have to do with it?
Long created a burden-shifting framework for proving a traffic stop was racially motivated, and held the defendant’s showing need not rest on statistics. It is the closest existing framework, but it addresses one decision and its remedy is suppression rather than dismissal.
Why does Proctor taking the Fifth hurt the defense?
He is not a party, so no adverse inference is drawn against the Commonwealth from his silence, and the defense loses the witness who could link the bias to specific decisions in the investigation.
What happens if the motion is denied?
The case returns toward trial, and the bias evidence becomes cross-examination material rather than a basis for dismissal.
Hearing details, the Fifth Amendment invocation and Scapicchio’s account from the Boston Globe, September 15, 2026. Adam Lally’s August 27, 2026 testimony and the quoted exchange from Boston 25 News, reporting by Ted Daniel, August 27, 2026. Quotations from Commonwealth v. Long taken from the slip opinion, SJC-12868, September 17, 2020, read in full; CourtListener returns no reporter citation for it. Citations verified: Commonwealth v. Lora, 451 Mass. 425 (2008); Commonwealth v. Lewin, 405 Mass. 566 (1989); Commonwealth v. Mayfield, 398 Mass. 615 (1986); Commonwealth v. O’Dell, 392 Mass. 445 (1984); Commonwealth v. Lanigan, 419 Mass. 15 (1994). Colonel Noble’s remark and the CPCS position as reported in July 2026. Michael Proctor has not been charged with any crime. Myles King has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. The outcome of the September 22 session has not been reported. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.