A British man convicted of murdering his wife and baby girl in their Hopkinton home on Cubs Path is seeking a new trial, according to multiple news sources.
Neil Entwistle, 44, is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after he was convicted in 2008 of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2006 shooting deaths of his wife, Rachel, 27, and their daughter, 9-month-old Lillian Rose. A Boston Herald article on Wednesday noted that the murder was committed with a gun stolen from his father-in-law. After returning the gun to his father-in-law’s Carver home, the native of England booked a one-way flight to London but was extradited after the bodies were discovered.
According to court records, Entwistle filed a petition with the Supreme Judicial Court on Aug. 23. His automatic appeal of his conviction was rejected in 2012. Entwistle also unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case in January 2013. He has been serving time in the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater for more than a decade.
The case garnered national attention and was profiled on NBC’s “Dateline” in June 2008.
Entwistle, who is representing himself, is requesting a new trial because he questioned whether a jury reenactment was done in a legal and proper way. The 5-foot, 2-inch juror who, during deliberations, reenacted the role of his wife in what the defense suggested was a murder-suicide, Entwistle said, was a violation of his rights because it was not “governed by the rules of evidence,” the MetroWest Daily News first reported on Wednesday.
“The defense asked the jury to ponder whether this case before them wasn’t a double murder at all, a gun in the hand of the husband, but rather a murder-suicide,” according to the transcript of the “Dateline” segment.
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