Meriden Police Brutality Case Going to Trial

After failing to have police brutality charges against him dismissed, Meriden police officer Evan Cossette is going to trial.

Cossette, indicted by the federal government last year, is accused of shoving a prison whose hands were cuffed while being held inside a holding cell at the Meriden Police Department in 2010.

The victim received a head injury as a result. Cossette, the son of Police Chief Jeffry Cossette, was indicted by a grand jury that issued two counts, including a charge that Evan Cossette lied on official police reports about the incident.

Jury selection, according to NBC Connecticut, begins today in the trial.

Under the indictment, Cossette is charged with one count of use of unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer, which carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000.  

He is also charged with one count of obstruction of a federal investigation by preparing a false report, which carries a maximum prison term of 20 years and a fine of up to $250,000.

Cossette has pleaded not guilty to both charges.

He had sought a dismissal of both counts on the grounds that the federal government could not prove that Cossette intended to inflict harm on the prisoner and because the government can not prove that Cossette attempted to lie on his official police report of the incident.

A judge this month, however, rejected both of those arguments, clearing the way for jury selection to begin.

Cossette, according to court filings in the case in U.S. District Court in New Haven, also will not be able to use as evidence in his defense a report issued in May of 2012 that said there was no evidence that he used undue force against the prisoner, that there was not an attempted cover up of the alleged abuse or that there was no evidence of a culture of favoritism toward the chief’s son in the police department.

Federal prosecutors successfully argued in their motion to have that evidence suppressed that the report was done at the behest of Meriden police administrators and that while it was touted as an “independent” investigation by an attorney, they believe it was anything but that.

“First, the report itself, which includes both ... opinions and summaries of witness statements, is hearsay, and therefore inadmissible,” the lawyers said in their motion to suppress the report. The report, they added, appears to be based on the investigator’s “own personal opinions.”