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Above, Attorney John P. Morris listens as his new client, Brendon Owen, makes a point to Judge Cannone.
At his last court appearance, via Zoom from the Norfolk County Jail, on Jan. 2, Brendon Owen, who has been held since Dec. 2021 in the murder of his ex-wife, Shirley Branco and an assault on his mother in law as well as arson of the home he formerly shared with Branco in Franklin, the judge ordered him to appear in person at the courthouse on Feb. 3 at noon, to which Owen objected strenuously.
He was still objecting when court officers brought him into Court Room 25 at the Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham Monday to face a new judge, Beverly J. Cannone, an associate justice for the Massachusetts Superior Courts. Cannone is the same judge who has presided over both of Karen Read’s trials. The January hearing had touched on a competency evaluation of Owen conducted at Bridgewater State Hospital and also the request by his appointed counsel, Neil Madden, to be relieved of responsibility for Owen due to the latter’s intractable opposition to more or less everything proposed or done on his behalf by Madden. That judge agreed to the request and, at the suggestion of Madden, allowed for Madden to return at the next hearing (namely, Monday, Feb.3) to brief the new counsel and share the “seven binders” of material and notes he said he had accumulated in working on Owen’s behalf.
Alas, the new counsel, Attorney John P. Morris, Esq., based in Salem, was informed that the court had moved the hearing from noon to 11.15, on Monday. But apparently, Madden was not so informed. As a result, Madden was determined to be ‘on his way’ while Monday’s hearing was in full swing. With that conundrum in mind, the Judge eventually rescheduled the hearing for May, but not before Owen engaged most of the 15-20 minute session in more or less cross examining the prosecutor and the judge about a long list of complaints and grievances, the first being that he was not allowed to participate by Zoom (`as I have done over the last three years’), and then demanding a guarantee that the Norfolk County Sheriff will provide him a ‘single cell,’ in part due to Owen’s preference, but also he suggested, because it is better for the seizure disorder from which he suffers.
At one point the judge tried to admonish him for contacting the DA’s office, but that provoked even more vociferous comments from Owen, who stated that he couldn’t get the information he needed anywhere else and his repeated challenge to the judge, “What would you have done?”
Morris, who had only just met Owen a little earlier in the morning, seemed overwhelmed but regarding his own readiness to represent Owen, told the judge he had read the Bridgewater report and the charging documents and some of the other preliminary information about the case.
When, Judge Cannone finally proposed a reschedule to May, each date that was proposed drew questions of “which day of the week is that?” from Owen, who insisted, without explanation, that certains days of the week wouldn’t work for him. Finally, after much negotiation all parties settled on Friday, May 30. And, again, Cannone stated, he would need to appear in person.
Owen objected but was led out of the court for transport back to the jail in Dedham.
Above, Judge Cannone listens...
