Court Upholds Salem Stabbing Conviction

SALEM, MA — An appeals court upheld the conviction of a Salem man convicted last year of stabbing a homeless man outside the Peabody Essex Museum. In his appeal, Jamie Bent argued that Essex County prosecutors had never established him as the assailant and that there was a miscarriage of justice when a prosecutor told the jury to hold him "accountable" during closing arguments. Bent, who is serving a four to six year prison sentence, has maintained that a woman he had been dating for a few weeks at the time of the June 2017 stabbing was the assailant.

That woman, Nicole Cameron, of Salem, testified at Bent's Feb. 2018 trial as a cooperating witness. Cameron helped Bent hide the knife and both were originally charged with civil rights violations which were not pursued. Cameron told the jury that she and Bent attacked the 35-year-old victim after he called her a "crack whore" and admitted that she kicked the man several times and used a racial slur. But she identified Bent as the person who stabbed the victim multiple times when surveillance tape was shown to the jury at trial.

The appeals court ruled that the trial judge had acted properly in leaving the decision on whether the video and Cameron's testimony clearly identified Bent as the assailant. "The videos are consistent with Cameron's account of what happened, and '[i]nterpretation of the footage in relation to the witnesses' testimony was for the jury'," the ruling said.