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That ruling prompted anger from the state.
“Today the justice system failed the families who lost their loved ones at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home,” state Attorney General Andrea Campbell said in a statement. “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.”
Susan Kenney, whose father Charles Lowell died of Covid-19 at the home, was in court and expressed shock at the ruling.
“It’s disgusting, absolutely disgusting,” she said. “It’s just a injustice. There is no accountability. They need to be made examples of. Everyone knew that the virus was coming down the pike. You don’t contaminate people. There are basic things you don’t do and they were done there because their leadership sucked.”
Walsh and Clinton pleaded not guilty in 2020 to charges stemming from their decision in March of that year to combine two dementia units, bringing together residents who were positive for the coronavirus with those who had no symptoms.
A 2022 state Inspector General’s report found that Walsh lacked both the leadership skills and the temperament to run such a facility when he was hired in 2016. The 91-page report, which covers the period from May 2016 until February 2020 — just before the pandemic struck with full force — was also highly critical of the process that led to Walsh’s hiring as superintendent.
Walsh, a former Marine who resigned after criminal charges were filed, had no supervisory experience in a health care setting or skilled nursing facility when he was hired. Yet according to state law, such experience was not required of the home’s superintendent at the time.
In 2021, McDonough dismissed the charges. McDonough found that there was “insufficient reasonably trustworthy evidence that, had these two dementia units not been merged, the medical condition” of five veterans in question would have been materially different.
But last year, Massachusetts’ highest court reinstated charges. In their ruling, the majority of the justices found that the facts presented to the grand jury constituted probable cause to believe that Walsh and Clinton violated the elder abuse statute and that Hampden Superior Court Judge Edward McDonough Jr. erred in dismissing the charges.
In 2022, Massachusetts agreed to pay $56 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by the families of veterans who died.
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