Quote of the Day

Lawyers have a tough job what with the suit-wearing and lying. They also have to deal with criminals, which doesn’t seem fun. Particularly when you’re trying to defend them and they end up viciously attacking you in court.

Middlesex Superior Court officers had to peel an accused murderer off one of Boston’s best-known criminal defense attorneys yesterday after he claimed Jeffrey Denner tried to poison him, then attacked him in front of a judge.

Just as his now-suspended jury-waived trial was about to get under way on a charge he assaulted a correctional officer at Bridgewater State Hospital, Eben Howard told Judge Diane M. Kottmyer that Denner was “useless rubbish,” had poisoned his cranberry juice and that Denner’s co-counsel, Mark Freeman, had run over his dog, according to a transcript. Howard, 36, handcuffed and in chains, lunged at Denner.

Howard, who Denner said is awaiting trial for murder in North Carolina, was accused of beating family killer Neil Entwistle at the Middlesex Jail in Cambridge in 2006.

Denner said he was jumped right after telling Kottmyer Howard was competent to stand trial.

“Perhaps I spoke too hastily,” he said.

[Boston Herald]

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