Former MIT police officer D’Amelio sentenced to 2.5 years in jail
Former MIT police officer D’Amelio sentenced to 2.5 years in jail
Former MIT police officer Joseph D’Amelio, charged in 2009 for trafficking prescription drugs, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail at his trial Tuesday.
D’Amelio was arrested in uniform in March 2009 when Boston Police caught him buying OxyContin and Roxicodone pills — both of which contain oxycodone — in East Boston. At his arraignment, D’Amelio was charged with trafficking more than 100 grams of oxycodone — an offense which carries a sentence of between 10 and 20 years in state prison.
D’Amelio pleaded guilty to — and was sentenced for — the lesser charge of possession with intent to distribute. However, court documents explicitly state that he left the site of the oxycodone deal with “a list of prices,” not the pills themselves (as had been previously reported).
D’Amelio was sentenced to serve in Boston’s Suffolk County House of Correction, but his defense counsel requested that he serve his time in the Dukes County Jail in Martha’s Vineyard — a significantly more pleasant facility — instead. The court subsequently recommended that D’Amelio go to Dukes County, but Suffolk County District Attorney Press Secretary Jake Wark said that D’Amelio’s chance of serving there was “slim.”
As of Thursday evening, it was unclear where D’Amelio will serve his sentence.
Speaking on behalf of the prosecution, Wark said, “We’ve obtained an outstanding result for a defendant who never had physical possession of the drugs.”
—Adisa Kruayatidee