| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Complete Cassino ruling | 91.04 KB |
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today it had no reason to overturn Adam Cassino's first-degree murder conviction for the death of neighbor Barbara Tagen, 65, in her Andrew Square apartment in 2011.
The ruling means Cassino will spend the rest of his life in state prison without chance of parole.
Cassino argued he should, at the least, get a new trial because Boston Police who'd quickly zeroed in on him as a suspect after Tagen's body was discovered got a look at his blood-stained shoes, being held in a storage area at Bridgewater State Hospital, without a warrant.
Cassino's mother had him committed to Bridgewater for drug addiction - a few days after authorities say he beat Tagen to death.
The state's highest court declined to say whether a hospital worker showing the shoes to a Boston cop without a warrant violated Cassino's Fourth-Amendment rights, because police already had enough evidence to get a search warrant - which they did - to seize the shoes as evidence, in particular, the fact that the attack on Tagen was so brutal that it would have been almost impossible for her attacker to have escaped without getting splattered with her blood.
Since police had a valid search warrant, obtained without any evidence related to the initial look at the shoes, they remained valid evidence at trial, the court ruled.