Bolaski misses check-in with police

A delay of five hours on a court-ordered check-in Thursday at the Springfield Police Department landed a man awaiting retrial on a murder charge in hot water.
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140929/NEWS02/709299933

2Published September 29, 2014 in the Rutland Herald Bolaski misses check-in with police By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A delay of five hours on a court-ordered check-in Thursday at the Springfield Police Department landed a man awaiting retrial on a murder charge in hot water. Kyle Bolaski, 30, a former Springfield resident, was released from prison in June and put back on pre-trial release conditions after the Vermont Supreme Court granted his appeal and ordered a new trial in connection with the 2008 shooting death of a Massachusetts man during a confrontation involving several people at a Chester ball field. Bolaski was convicted in 2011 of second-degree murder in the death of Vincent Tamburello and had been serving a 25-year-to-life sentence before the Vermont Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that there had been at least one “obvious,” although inadvertent, error committed by the judge during his jury trial. As part of his release conditions while he awaits his new trial some time in 2015, Bolaski had been ordered to report in person to the Springfield Police Department every Monday and Thursday morning and sign in. He was given a two-hour window, between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., to do so, but, police said, he failed to show up in time Thursday morning. Springfield Police say they recorded a phone call to their dispatch center that was made around 1 p.m. Thursday during which Bolaski said he’d been working long hours in recent weeks at a roofing job site and had simply lost track of what day it was until lunchtime rolled around and it suddenly occurred to him that he’d missed his check-in. Exactly what was said next during that brief phone call was a point of considerable contention on Friday afternoon when Bolaski appeared at the courthouse in White River Junction accompanied by family members to plead innocent to a criminal charge of violating a condition of pre-trial release. Bolaski’s defense attorney, Brian Marsicovetere, argued that his client’s release had been going well for three months and the incident was little more than a routine slip-up which, by all accounts, Bolaski immediately corrected when he drove down to the police department right after he called Thursday and then signed in as required. However, in his affidavit filed with the court, Springfield Police Detective Patrick Call said during his review of the recorded call it sounded to him as if Bolaski had first tried to enlist the dispatcher’s help in covering up the missed appointment. After being told he should come in right away to sign the log, Call wrote, “Bolaski then asked if he came down if there was any way that (the dispatcher) could write it in that he checked in” when he was supposed to. Call said the dispatcher replied that there was “no way” he could do that and the call ended shortly thereafter. Special prosecutor John Lavoie argued Friday that Bolaski’s pre-trial release should be canceled because of the alleged infraction, and the fact that when police searched Bolaski after he checked in Thursday, they found he had two Valium pills in an unmarked bottle. During Friday’s arraignment, Marsicovetere took issue with Call’s affidavit, pointing out that none of the short exchange had been quoted verbatim and instead the court was having to rely on the detective’s summary of the conversation. Marsicovetere said he would provide the court with a copy of Bolaski’s prescription to prove he was legitimately in possession of the pills. After a lengthy back-and-forth between the attorneys, Judge Karen Carroll said she did not feel any of the allegations rose to the level of seriousness sufficient to change her mind as to whether Bolaski was either a risk of flight or a danger to the public while he is on release. Addressing the allegation that Bolaski tried to dissuade the dispatcher from correctly recording the time, Carroll noted from the bench: “It is something that, if it happened the way the police said it happened, is extremely disappointing. It seems to be something that might have been an attempt to ‘put one over’ on the court, which the court is not happy about.” Carroll said again that it did not change her calculation as to the risks of pre-trial release. With that, she re-released Bolaski on similar conditions and continued the $10,000 bail that the family had already posted on Bolaski’s behalf.