Appeal courts sides with town in local lawyer's arrest
The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a federal judge's ruling yesterday that Framingham Police did not violate a Natick attorney's constitutional rights when they arrested him in 2004.
Even though the criminal harassment and witness intimidation charges against Thomas Grassia were later dismissed, the detectives who obtained a warrant and arrested Grassia at his Natick law office acted reasonably, a panel of appellate judges ruled.
The officers acted on complaints from Grassia's ex-lover, who told police that she suspected he had thrown a brick through the window of her Framingham office and left a homemade firebomb outside that office, among other incidents.
The appellate judges said the officers established probable cause and are therefore protected by qualified immunity.
"The Court of Appeals has got it exactly right, and this will be a cautionary tale in the future," attorney Leonard H. Kesten, who represents the town, said yesterday. "We see this as a positive message for victims everywhere and for the police officers who protect them."
Grassia argued that he was arrested and prosecuted without reasonable cause, and that police displayed a "reckless disregard for the truth."
"The fact that we lose doesn't not mean that they arrested him rightfully," Robert Scott, one of Grassia's attorneys, said yesterday.
He contended that qualified immunity is "basically a mechanism for excusing wrongdoing."
Grassia filed a federal lawsuit against Detectives Theodore Piers and William Delaney, their unnamed supervisor and the town of Framingham in 2007 after his charges were dropped.
Police led Grassia away from his office in handcuffs Aug. 13, 2004, after Framingham District Court issued an arrest warrant based on a 13-page police affidavit.
Police, supported by the opinion of an FBI profiler, said they thought Grassia posed an imminent threat to ex-girlfriend Maureen Crocker.
Grassia was arrested after he tracked Crocker down at her parents' house in Connecticut and had her served with a restraining order.
Framingham District Court dismissed the felony witness-intimidation charge without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction and, after a hearing on the misdemeanor harassment charge, a judge concluded "insufficient evidence presented - no probable cause found," according to the appeal court ruling.
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Treadwell in his filing wrote that releasing the search-warrant materials is not in the public's interest when no one has been taken into police custody. "The investigation is in its early stages and no arrest has been made," Treadwell wrote.
Scott said the federal courts have been "watering down" people's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. "Everybody has the right to be free of unreasonable arrest," Scott said, "and in my humble opinion, much of the federal
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