NORTHAMPTON — Christopher Conley, the city man convicted in 2020 of trying to kill his daughter by injecting her medical device with a caustic chemical, was denied a new trial in a ruling this week by a Hampshire Superior Court judge.
Appellate attorneys for Conley argued that his trial lawyers were ineffective and failed to act in his best interests. Judge Richard Carey rejected those claims.
Prosecutors alleged at trial that, in 2015, Conley injected his 7-year-old daughter’s cecostomy tube — a catheter device that connects to the intestines — with Liquid-Plumr drain cleaner and gave her an overdose of opiates. A jury convicted Conley of attempted murder and assault charges.
“This was a horrific crime, which makes the decision to uphold the jury verdict particularly heartening,” First Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne said in a written statement. “Despite a vigorous defense from his trial attorneys, the evidence of the defendant’s guilt was too overwhelming to overcome.”
After the poisoning, doctors had to remove more than 6 feet of the victim’s intestines and a third of her bladder. She was discharged from the hospital in February 2016.
Last June, the girl’s mother, Julie Gordon, pleaded “nolo contendre” to an unrelated count of child endangerment. Her plea means that she maintained her innocence but acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her at trial.
Gordon was accused of causing her daughter to undergo unnecessary medical treatments in the two years prior to the 2015 poisoning by her then-husband. The same judge who denied Conley’s new trial, Richard Carey, sentenced Gordon to probation until September 2023.
At Gordon’s sentencing, the victim’s adopted older sister read a letter describing the girl as “the strongest person I know.”
Conley has said that neither he nor Gordon harmed their daughter. He confessed to police but recanted during his trial.
In a Superior Court hearing last month, attorney Mary Miles faulted prosecutors for “almost abusive” questioning when Conley testified in his own defense. Miles said prosecutors accused him of acting and asked if he had ever “won an Oscar,” and that his trial lawyers, Mark Bluver and John Godleski, should have objected.
Miles also argued that the trial lawyers should have fought to include the testimony of an attorney who would have said that Conley had been planning to make a false confession.
The judge disagreed, writing that any perceived errors were “minor instances in the context of highly detailed, fact-intensive testimony that spanned days … None of them stood out as particularly impactful, ‘make or break’ moments in this intense, emotionally charged trial” and they were not enough to justify a new trial.
Conley can now appeal his conviction, and the denial of his motion for a new trial, to the Massachusetts Appeals Court, a process that the Northwestern district attorney’s office said can take up to two years.
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.