By George Brennan
FALMOUTH — A Sandwich police
officer is being charged with drunken driving in connection with an off-duty
crash Nov. 30 in Mashpee.
Daniel J. Perkins, 38, of
Sandwich, emerged from Falmouth District Court on Wednesday morning after a
closed-door review of the evidence before a magistrate. "They did issue the
complaint," Perkins said as he left the courthouse. He declined further
comment.
His attorney, Jens Bahrawy,
also declined to comment on the case.
Neither Cape and Islands
District Attorney Michael O'Keefe's office nor the Falmouth District Court
clerk's office could say when Perkins would be arraigned.
Mashpee police filed for a
criminal complaint in December — two weeks after the crash, in which Perkins
was injured — seeking to charge him with operating under the influence of
alcohol. The crash occurred shortly after 11 p.m. at 759 Route 130 near the
Sandwich town line. Perkins had to be freed from a truck, which had rolled on
its side, using the Jaws of Life hydraulic tool. He was taken to Cape Cod
Hospital, where he was treated and released.
According to police, Perkins
was the lone occupant of the vehicle at the time of the crash.
To date, police have declined
to comment on what evidence they have that Perkins was drunk.
When police don't make an
arrest and instead file a criminal complaint, as they did in the case of
Perkins, the accused is summonsed to court and is entitled to request a
show-cause hearing before a magistrate, according to the Massachusetts Trial
Court website. At that hearing, which is private, police lay out the evidence
against the accused and the magistrate decides whether the prosecution has
shown enough to proceed to arraignment.
"It's to determine whether
a crime was committed and who did it," David Frank, managing editor of
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, said of a magistrate's show-cause hearing.
According to a 2007 ruling by
the Supreme Judicial Court, a show-cause hearing "allows the clerk
magistrate to screen out baseless complaints with minimal harm to the accused's
reputation."
While a magistrate's hearing is
used to determine whether there is probable cause, it is different from a
probable-cause hearing. That occurs after someone has been arraigned on a
criminal charge that is outside of the purview of a district court, Frank said.
Probable cause hearings are open to the public because criminal charges have
already been filed and an arraignment held, but typically grand jury
indictments are returned before a district court case gets to the
probable-cause stage, he said.
That won't happen in this case
because drunken-driving cases are under the district court's jurisdiction.
Perkins is a five-year veteran
of the Sandwich Police Department and had worked for the Barnstable County
Sheriff's Office before joining the force.
An internal affairs
investigation into the crash concluded this week, Sandwich Police Chief Peter
Wack said.
The Times has requested a copy
of the investigation and any discipline, but the town has not yet officially
responded to that public records request.
