Boston police officer indicted for shooting death of Dorchester man

BOSTON — A Boston police officer has been indicted by a grand jury for voluntary manslaughter in the March shooting death of a Dorchester man.

34-year-old Nicholas O’Malley was arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter after responding to a report of a carjacking.

39-year-old Stephenson King Jr. was sitting in a stolen car when O’Malley and other officers approached him.

The Commonwealth alleges that O’Malley shot and killed King without legal justification after he backed into the unoccupied cruiser and started to drive away.

O’Malley claims that he feared the second officer would be struck by a car, which the Commonwealth alleges contradicts the evidence.

O’Malley is represented by high powered attorney David Yanetti, who represented Karen Read in both her murder trials.

In a statement on X, Yannetti described O’Malley as a “a good man who finds himself falsely accused of manslaughter because he performed his sworn duty and defended his fellow officers when confronted by a dangerous criminal with an established history of violence and felonies.”

“We will not rest,” the statement continued, “until officer O’Malley is rightfully acquitted.”

Thousands of dollars have been raised to support O’Malley. O’Malley has pleaded not guilty. Attorney Benjamin Crump is representing the family of Stephenson King.

Crump shared a statement with Boston 25, writing:

“For months, Stephenson King Jr.’s loved ones have been grieving the devastating loss of a son, a family member and a man whose life mattered deeply, while also fighting for the transparency and accountability they deserve. The arrest, manslaughter charge, and now this indictment against the officer involved sends a powerful message about the seriousness of this case. This family knows that accountability cannot stop here. They deserve the full truth about what happened to Stephenson and a justice system willing to fully examine every decision that led to his death. We will continue standing beside them and demanding transparency, truth and justice every step of the way.”

In a statement on X, Yanetti’s law firm posted a statement saying:

Today, we learned that the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office file a nolle prosequi of the pending case against our client Boston Police Officer Nicholas O’Malley in the Roxbury Division of the Boston Municipal Court. That means there will be no court tomorrow. This is a remarkable turn of events, something that we have never encountered in decades of practice, and it is wrong. Recall that the D.A.’s Office arrested Officer O’Malley only eight days after his shooting of a dangerous carjacking suspect who had put the officer’s partner and the public in grave peril. By arresting the officer so quickly - without presenting any evidence to the grand jury -the D.A.’s Office signaled that the arrest could not wait for a full exploration of the available evidence. They were essentially announcing that they had to arrest him then because they believed there was some urgency. They could not let Officer O’Malley simply report to court on his own. They needed to parade him before the media in handcuffs and have him photographed in the court dock.

We now know that it was all a stunt. If having a pending a charge was so important that it could not wait for a grand jury to hear the case, why is that pending charge now dismissed? The answer is obvious. The D.A.’s Office has provided minimal discovery to the defense, despite the fact that the case has been pending in court for over two months. The defense does not have witness statements, our own client’s statement, police reports regarding the violent carjacking that occurred on the night in question and other crucial discovery material. Given that the prosecution would not provide this material voluntarily to us-to comply with their ethical duties and their sense of fairness to the man they are trying to prosecute-we filed discovery motions to ask a judge to order them to provide this mandatory discovery to us. Those motions were to be heard in court tomorrow. Instead, prosecutors went to court on their own to file a nolle prosequi and end the case. This is by no means a usual practice. Every day, in just about every court in the Commonwealth, the D.A.’s office fights to keep a district or municipal-court case alive until a client is arraigned in Superior Court. Prosecutors insist on having a case pending at all times until the prosecution is concluded.

Here, the D.A.’s Office decided otherwise, so as to avoid having our discovery motions heard. In the aftermath of this nolle prosequi, our firm has contacted the prosecution today to demand basic, mandatory discovery immediately. Despite having waited for two months, we are now being told that we have to wait longer, until our client’s arraignment in Superior Court. This is unacceptable, and quite frankly, cowardly. But make no mistake about it: we will not be deterred. Whatever tricks the prosecution has in mind, they will not work. We will fully investigate this case and get to the truth, despite the roadblocks they attempt to put in front of us. This indictment was a foregone conclusion once they made the ill-advised decision to charge Officer O’Malley with a crime, even though he was just doing his job and protecting the public. We look forward to his arraignment in Superior Court so they we can continue to fight these false charges.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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