Worksop Double Murderer Entwistle To Appeal

30 June 2011, 10:27 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

A South Yorkshire man who shot dead his American wife and baby daughter has filed an appeal against his convictions.

Neil Entwistle, 32, was jailed in June 2008 for the first degree murders of Rachel, 27, and nine-month-old Lillian in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, on January 20 2006.

He is now arguing he should get a new trial because police searched his home without a warrant when they came to check on the well-being of his family.

In his appeal, filed at the state's Supreme Judicial Court, his lawyer Stephen Paul Maidman argued that evidence taken from the home was seized illegally.

Mr Maidman argues that two searches were carried out without warrants and the evidence seized as a result should have been suppressed during Entwistle's trial.

"The two warrantless entries into the defendant's house by the police violated the federal and state constitutions," he wrote in the appeal brief.

But prosecutors have said police were justified in entering the home because they were responding to the pleas of concerned relatives and friends.

They say Entwistle had become despondent after accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in debt and had complained about his sex life with his wife.

Entwistle's lawyer also argues that judge Diane Kottmyer did not thoroughly question potential jurors to determine whether they were biased against him after the case received intense local and international news coverage.

"That there was extraordinary prejudicial pre-trial publicity in this case that was both saturating and inflammatory, by Massachusetts and even national standards, cannot be legitimately disputed," Mr Maidman wrote in the appeal.