The federal jury deciding the fate of former Stoughton police detective Matthew Farwell told the court on Monday, November 9, that it is deadlocked in the murder case of Sandra Birchmore — a major new development in a trial this desk reported on November 7, when the same jury had only just begun deliberating. After about ten and a half hours of deliberations spread over Friday and Monday, the twelve jurors sent Chief U.S. District Judge Denise Casper a note saying, in the wording reported by WJAR, “We are in a deadlock it looks like will not change anytime soon.” WHDH reported the wording in a closely similar form. Judge Casper did not declare a mistrial. She sent the panel home just before 4:30 p.m. on Monday and ordered deliberations to resume on Tuesday morning, November 10, at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts.
Source: WPRI via Gilbert Post
Farwell has pleaded not guilty to two federal charges: killing a witness or victim, and causing the death of an unborn child, because Birchmore, 23, was pregnant when she died. Federal prosecutors allege he killed her on February 1, 2021, in her apartment in Canton, Massachusetts, to stop her from disclosing federal crimes — abuse they allege began when she was 15. Farwell says Birchmore took her own life. Every charge is an allegation, he is presumed innocent, and if the jury convicts him on the witness-killing count he faces a mandatory life sentence in federal prison.
Source: Court TV / Vinnie Politan, citing WJAR and WHDH
How Monday unfolded in the Boston courtroom
The jury — eight men and four women — began deliberating on Friday afternoon, November 6, after closing arguments ended the nearly month-long trial, and worked for a little more than three hours before going home for the weekend. It returned on Monday, November 9, for its first full day. That afternoon the jurors sent Judge Casper two notes: one dealt with scheduling, and the second reported the deadlock. Rather than press the panel for a verdict that night, the judge sent everyone home. The judge is expected to give the jurors fresh instructions when they return on Tuesday, and former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley told WCVB the court will most likely give an “Allen charge” — an instruction urging jurors on each side of a split to listen to the other side and keep working toward a unanimous verdict.
Source: Court TV / Vinnie Politan, citing WJAR and WHDH
The case the deadlocked jury is weighing
Prosecutors presented surveillance video, phone and device timelines, and expert testimony over a trial that heard about 50 witnesses and considered about 500 exhibits. Their strangulation expert testified that a fractured hyoid bone in Birchmore's neck indicated strangulation, and that the scene — Birchmore was found dead in her Canton apartment on February 4, 2021, after not showing up for her job as an aide at a Sharon elementary school — had been staged with a duffle-bag strap. Prosecutors allege Farwell, who met Birchmore through the Stoughton Police Explorers youth programme where he was an instructor, killed her after she became pregnant and was about to expose years of alleged abuse.
Source: Particle News summary of trial reporting
The defence case points the other way. The state medical examiner, Dr. Maria Del Mar Capo Martinez, originally listed the cause of death as asphyxia by hanging and the manner of death as suicide, before the office later changed the manner to “undetermined” — a shift the defence treats as central. Defence experts contradicted the prosecution's strangulation evidence, and defence attorney Kimberly Stevens argued Birchmore was suicidal and that Farwell did not kill her. Prosecution rebuttal, from Elizabeth Riley, argued the walls were closing in on Farwell, not Birchmore, in January 2021. DNA testing at trial also excluded Farwell as the father of Birchmore's unborn child.
Source: Court TV / Vinnie Politan, citing WJAR and WHDH
Farwell is charged, not convicted. He has pleaded not guilty, his lawyers say Sandra Birchmore died by suicide, and he is presumed innocent unless the jury finds the government has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. A deadlocked jury is not a verdict for either side.
Why the first investigation is also on trial
The deadlock is not the only reason this case has drawn national attention. Prosecutors criticised the original Massachusetts State Police handling of the death, citing unrecorded interviews, a lack of search warrants, and failures to share key information with the medical examiner — gaps that helped the death sit as a suicide ruling, with no local charges, until the FBI opened its own investigation in 2023 and a federal grand jury indicted Farwell in August 2024. That history is why the verdict matters beyond Stoughton and Canton: it is a test of whether an initial investigation that gets a death wrong can still be corrected by the same system, and of what safeguards protect teenagers in police-run youth programmes such as the Explorers — a question that reaches Punjabi diaspora families and every other community in the United States whose children join explorer posts, cadet schemes and similar programmes, where the adult in charge holds police authority.
Source: Particle News summary of trial reporting
What happens next
Deliberations resume on Tuesday morning, November 10, with Judge Casper expected to instruct the jury again. Three outcomes are possible from here. The jury may reach the unanimous verdict federal law requires, on each count separately. The judge may keep the panel working for more days if the deadlock softens. Or, if the impasse hardens, she may declare a mistrial — in which case federal prosecutors would have to decide whether to try Farwell again. If he is convicted, sentencing follows and the witness-killing count carries mandatory life. If he is acquitted, he walks free of the federal charges. Awaaz Punjab will report the verdict, or a mistrial, when the court announces it.
Source: WPRI via Gilbert Post