Conviction overturned in 1980 killing

BOSTON, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has granted a new trial to a man convicted in 2005 of killing a woman in 1980 for $10,0000.

The court, the highest in the state, said a judge improperly allowed prosecutors to ask leading questions of a witness who refused to swear to tell the truth and mostly answered "no comment," The Boston Globe reported. The witness, Robert Hoeg, was a friend of the defendant, David Stewart, and is serving a life sentence for an unrelated killing.

"The leading questions essentially permitted the Commonwealth to place its entire case before the jury in the form of an impermissible interrogation without competent testimony by the witness," Justice Judith Cowin wrote in an opinion released Friday.

The victim, Frances Carriere, 44, of Buzzards Bay, was stabbed in her home in January 1980. Investigators say her estranged husband Edmond, hired Richard Grebauski, who took Stewart on as an assistant. Carriere and Grebauski, who died several years ago in a motorcycle crash, were never charged because of lack of evidence.

Years later, Stewart allegedly told his son the money he was paid for the killing was "the easiest $10,000" he ever earned.