Overview
- On Monday the defense began presenting forensic witnesses and expects to finish testimony this week with closing arguments and jury deliberations possible by week’s end.
- The trial turns on a disputed hyoid fracture: a prosecution expert said the break supports homicidal strangulation while defense experts will tell jurors the bone can fracture under low force and can be consistent with suicide.
- Prosecutors say motive was to silence Sandra Birchmore because she could expose an alleged years‑long sexual relationship that began when she was 15, and they have tied three federal offenses to that theory.
- The government introduced thousands of texts, location data and surveillance to place Matthew Farwell near Birchmore’s Canton apartment; FBI DNA testing excluded Farwell as the fetus’s father and identified another man, Jason Pickard.
- Farwell has pleaded not guilty and faces a potential mandatory life sentence if convicted under the rare federal charge of killing to conceal federal crimes, and the case has raised scrutiny of Stoughton police handling of earlier leads and mentoring programs.