John Rams Jr., shown leaving Barnstable Superior Courthouse in 2007, was found not guilty of the murder of Shirley Reine.
BARNSTABLE – It is often the strategy of a defense lawyer to blame someone else for a crime.
But in a murder trial, it is not every day that the man being blamed is sitting in court watching the trial. Nor is it usual for both sides, defense and prosecution, to point the finger, at one point literally, at the same person.
That is what happened in the recent trial of the Commonwealth vs. John Rams Jr. in which Rams, 41, was being tried for the 2005 murder of Shirley Reine of East Falmouth.
For more on the Reines, see Falmouth’s “Inconvenient Legend”: Melvin Reine Dies
The prosecution alleged that Rams was the shooter, but the person the prosecution implicated in setting up the crime was Todd Reine, the victim’s stepson.
“Though it was alleged that Rams was the trigger man, this murder was set up by others,” Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said after the verdict. In the interview, he did not name Todd Reine or anyone else as a suspect in planning the murder, but he said the investigation into who murdered Shirley Reine will continue.
“There is no statute of limitations on the crime of murder.” O’Keefe said.
Todd Reine did not testify during the trial. Instead, he pled the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. The day he entered his plea, he decided to sit in on a morning session of the trial, he said. That led to defense attorney Timothy Flaherty pointing Todd Reine out during cross-examination of a witness, with the implication that the prosecution had the wrong man on trial.
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