On March 26th, two former officials of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, where 76 individuals died during the COVID outbreak settled their criminal cases originally filed in 2020. Hampden Superior Court Judge Edward J. McDonough accepted a request by former Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh and Medical Director Dr. Daid Clinton that they be allowed to admit to sufficient facts to support a guilty verdict on each count, in exchange for the case to be continued without a finding. As part of the court order, which will last three months, the two men must not work in a nursing home, contact the families of the victims or enter the veterans’ home without permission.
Walsh and Clinton were indicted in 2020 on charges of elder neglect and permitting bodily injury involving five veterans. The criminal neglect charges were initially dismissed by Judge McDonough in 2021, but the state attorney general’s office appealed the decision, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reinstated the charges in 2023.
During Tuesday’s court hearing, the attorney general’s office asked for Walsh to be sentenced to one year of home confinement with three years of probation. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell sharply criticized the Court decision as being too lenient. In a press statement, AG Campbell stated: “Today the justice system failed the families who lost their loved ones at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home. I am disappointed and disheartened with the Court’s decision, and want these families and our veterans to know my office did everything it could to seek accountability. We will continue to be vigilant in prosecuting cases of elder abuse and neglect.”