NORTHAMPTON — A jury has begun deliberating in the case of a former Pelham police chief charged with improperly storing more than 20 guns in his home.
Edward Fleury is charged with 22 counts of improperly storing a firearm stemming from a September 2014 search of his Pelham home.
During the four-day trial, the 12-member jury heard from 10 police officers involved with the search and inspection of the guns confiscated from Fleury’s home. Fleury’s wife, Jacalyn Fleury, also took the stand to testify over two days about the measures she said were in place in the home to securely store the guns.
“There is no question that there were a lot of firearms in Mr. Fleury’s home. No question at all that those firearms on this table were operable,” defense attorney Elizabeth Rodriguez-Ross said, referring to the guns presented as evidence in court. “He has a right to have those guns and that right is unquestioned. The question is about the 22 guns before you — 22 out of over 200 — that they took from his home and whether or not those guns were improperly stored.”
The problem came instead with the “ugly” actions of Pelham Police Chief Gary Thomann when he called Fleury out of his home, Rodriguez-Ross argued in her closing statements.
“Mr. Fleury was tricked,” Rodriguez-Ross said. Thomann had called Fleury on Sept. 11, 2014 and asked him to come down to the station to look at a firearm Thomann said was for sale.
Accounts differ on whether Thomann knew Fleury had taken guns out in anticipation going out to one of his home’s shooting ranges when the phone rang. Fleury was arrested when he arrived at the station and police descend on his home to conduct a search warrant. Police searched Fleury’s house on Sept. 14, 2014, to look for a Glock handgun that Fleury allegedly pointed at a friend outside the Belchertown VFW in August 2014.
Fleury was acquitted in October 2016 of an assault with a dangerous weapon charge arising from the VFW incident, as well as two counts of improperly storing a firearm. He has pleaded not guilty to the more than 20 charges in Hampshire Superior Court, where his trial began l Friday.
Jacalyn Fleury was home at the time police arrived and had a license to carry.
“[Jacalyn Fleury] was watching everything in the master bedroom until police came,” Rodriguez-Ross said. “What was she to do? Not open the door? Not come down the stairs?”
Finishing her testimony Wednesday morning, Jacalyn Fleury recalled that the guns found in the master bedroom had been brought down from the attic earlier that morning. They attic, she said, was locked.
“I was in the bedroom with all the weapons. They were safe with me,” Jacalyn Fleury said.
In his closing statements, Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Matthew Thomas referred to Jacalyn Fleury’s testimony as a “carefully tailored story for almost everything.”
Referencing her earlier testimony, Thomas questioned Fleury’s recounting that she was able to hear her husband lock a gun safe down the hall from the master bedroom even though Fleury testified a television was on in the bedroom as well as downstairs. Police alleged the safe was improperly locked. Fleury also testified she saw her husband lock the door to the attic, another location police said was unsecured. Thomas also cast doubt on her recollection of that event.
“What did it really show?” Thomas asked. “It shows that she is nice and trying to protect her husband of 35 years.”
Thomas also rebutted the defense’s argument of entrapment.
“The issue before you is this – did Chief Thomann entrap Ed Fleury into keeping those weapons unsecured or does Ed Fleury kind of live that way?” Thomas asked.
Were the weapons out because Fleury was cleaning them when Thomann called or was it because he was “a gun guy who loves having his weapons around,” Thomas questioned.
“If you’re going to buy into the entrapment, don’t you need a why? You never got a why,” Thomas said.
Fleury served as Pelham police chief from 1991 to 2009, but resigned his post after an 8-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed himself with a machine gun during a Westfield firearms exhibition that Fleury organized in 2008. He was acquitted of manslaughter in connection with the boy’s death in 2011.
The seven women and five men of the jury began their deliberations around noon. They deliberated for about four hours before being released for the day. Deliberations will resume Thursday morning in Hampshire Superior Court.
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.