Playing The Judicial Waiting Game - Editorial
It has been almost one year since former Bourne Select Board member James Potter was arrested and arraigned on a handful of felony charges that include sex crimes against minors, and a trial date has yet to be set.
There is no doubt that many court systems are still working through the backlog of cases that piled up during the pandemic; this, however, is one holdup that has certainly caught our attention, at least for the severity of the charges if not for the extensive public service record of the defendant in town government.
After the initial August 11, 2022, arraignment, when Mr. Potter pleaded not guilty to charges including indecent assault and battery on a child and rape of a child, a pretrial hearing date was set for October 20, 2022.
That hearing has now been continued a number of times, with the most recent being last week: Second Assistant District Attorney Russell Eonas confirmed that Mr. Potter’s July 24 appearance in court resulted in a pretrial hearing being continued to September 25 at the agreement of both parties. By our count, this is the seventh time the pretrial hearing has been rescheduled.
We can and do appreciate the seriousness of a case of this caliber—the process is thorough and cannot be expected to be handled in mere weeks or months—but we find it difficult to not wonder what is happening behind the scenes to keep this case stuck in pretrial limbo for so long.
It is well known that the law says defendants have the right to a speedy trial, but what, exactly, does “speedy” mean? A cursory look at the state’s informational webpage on the topic reveals the murkiness of such ambiguity: A defendant must be tried within 12 months of the “return day,” which is usually the date of the defendant’s arraignment; however, this time limit is often extended because the defendant agrees to continuances “and for other reasons.”
If the pretrial hearing is held in Barnstable Superior Court as scheduled on September 25, it will have been more than 58 weeks since Mr. Potter’s arrest. It is high time to get the ball rolling on these proceedings. Bourne is not a very big town, so we imagine that like us, the community is looking for transparency and hoping the proceedings will bring some answers as to how someone elected by citizens to serve the good of the town could be accused of such things.
That hope is difficult to maintain as the weeks trudge on and on, but it is still there. Mr. Potter is innocent until proven guilty, of course, but the situation itself is alarming and upsetting.
Through the red tape and litigious obscurity of it all, the main objective here is, as always, the truth and ultimately justice. For the sake of the victims involved, we hope that it is eventually served.