Mike Beaudet & Producer Kevin RothsteinLOWELL, Mass. (
MyFoxBoston.com) -- It took less than an hour for the Lowell District Court jury to find David McCarthy guilty of aggravated assault, but his wife and lawyer say the Lowell District Court jury only heard part of the story.
The charges were leveled over a beating McCarthy delivered in 2012 to another Billerica man, Ronald Stoddard, and there's no doubt how it ended for him: broken facial bones and a herniated disc.
Prosecutors asked that he serve six months in jail, saying it was clear that McCarthy sought out his victim, intending to deliver the beating. In the end the judge sentenced McCarthy to three months in jail, citing the severity of the assault.
The judge also kept the jury from hearing most of what transpired before the assault.
David McCarthy visited Stoddard, because Stoddard had been involved in an alleged road rage incident with McCarthy's wife Amy 90 minutes earlier. That much the jury heard.
They also heard a brief mention that Stoddard is related to a Billerica police lieutenant. But the 6-member jury wasn't allowed to hear what the McCarthys told FOX Undercover before the trial: that when police didn't charge Stoddard in the alleged road rage, the McCarthys became suspicious. Amy McCarthy was so afraid she refused to go home.
The jury did not hear a police call in which a dispatcher tells the officer responding to the alleged road rage that Stoddard is related to Billerica Police Lt. Edward O'Mahony and asks whether he wants "to do anything with it."
"My husband went there because the police washed their hands of it. If they had done their job he wouldn't have had to go there and ensure that Stoddard would not harm us," Amy McCarthy said after the verdict.
"Prosecutors though say this was a brutal beating?" FOX Undercover reporter Mike Beaudet asked her.
"My husband defended himself. If somebody approached anybody else with an open end box wrench, wouldn't somebody do the same thing?" McCarthy replied.
"Do you think Mr. Stoddard got special treatment because he has a relative on the Billerica force?" Beaudet asked McCarthy's lawyer, John Morris.
"I'm not sure of that. I think that the fact that he wasn't charged suggests he may have. Do I have evidence of that? No," Morris replied.
Billerica police have told FOX Undercover that no one in their department acted inappropriately and that Lt. O'Mahony had nothing to do with the investigation.
The police did try to charge Stoddard over that alleged road rage but a court clerk wouldn't issue charges.
