This is just in from the Boston Globe about the Giovanni Gonzalez missing person case. Today, the Law Office of Russell C Sobelman succeeded in getting the charges against his father dropped.
By Maria Sacchetti and John R. Ellement / Globe Staff / December 5, 2013
An Essex Superior Court judge today dismissed charges against a Lynn man accused of abducting his son, more than five years after the boy vanished during a weekend visit in Lynn.
No trace of Giovanni Gonzalez, then 5, has ever been found.
Judge John T. Lu today dismissed charges of parental kidnapping and lying to investigators against the father, Ernesto Gonzalez, according to Gonzalez’s attorneys, Lance Sobelman and Russell C. Sobelman.
Gonzalez’s lawyers had argued in court papers that state law calls for the dismissal of criminal charges when defendants are incompetent to stand trial and have served more than half of their potential prison sentences.
Gonzalez was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial in October, and has been shuttled between jail and secure mental hospitals since 2008 awaiting trial.
In November 2008, Gonzalez confessed to a Boston Globe reporter that he killed the boy, but he was never charged with the murder.
In a prior court hearing, Essex Assistant District Attorney Jean Curran had urged the judge to keep the case open, in case Gonzalez is found competent to stand trial next year.
Gonzalez’s attorneys have said he is unlikely to get out of jail soon. He has been civilly committed to Bridgewater State mental hospital through May, and the hospital has asked for that to be extended.
He is also facing additional criminal allegations from his time in jail, including an attack on a fellow inmate and assaulting a prison guard.
