Steven Ortiz is now a free man.
The Boston Globe first reported on Friday that Bristol County prosecutors dismissed the case against Ortiz, who was indicted back in 2017 on charges of heroin trafficking, possession with intent to distribute, and larceny exceeding $250.
In response to a motion filed by Ortiz’s defense team in 2024 alleging “egregious misconduct” by the New Bedford Police Department, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts conceded that “dismissal of the matters is an appropriate remedy.”
Ortiz’s case had been working its way through the courts for several years, but the alleged misconduct was first exposed in a z2023 Globe article. Ortiz’s fiancée, Carly Medeiros, told the Globe she believed New Bedford police officer Jared Lucas, with whom she was having an affair, had used information she gave him to launch the investigation into Ortiz without her knowledge.
In the motion to dismiss Ortiz’s case, the defense referenced a letter Medeiros wrote in 2022 alleging Lucas had given her drugs and money to plant on another man, Miguel Martinez, back in 2019.
Martinez’s defense team successfully argued that the evidence gathered in the drug trafficking case against him should be suppressed, as the search warrants were based on information from Medeiros, who Judge Rene Dupuis found to be unreliable. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts subsequently dismissed that case due to a lack of evidence.
From wpri.com.
