No date has been set for the Hampden Superior Court arraignment.
George StuartSPRINGFIELD — George W. Stuart, the retired Springfield police officer facing charges for an arson and standoff at his home in Ludlow, has been indicted by a Hampden Superior Court grand jury on a charge of burning a dwelling house.
Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni had said previously he would present the case to a grand jury rather than have the prosecution of Stuart stay in Palmer District Court.
Stuart, 71, had denied District Court charges of arson and discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a building when he was arraigned while in a hospital recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the stomach.
No date has been set yet for his arraignment now that the case is in Superior Court. Judge Peter A. Velis had previously said the Superior Court arraignment would have to happen at a hospital if Stuart was still hospitalized.
According to the state law under which Stuart was charged, a conviction would be punished “by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 20 years, or by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than 2½ years, or by a fine of not more than $10,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”
Stuart is recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot to the stomach following a 7½-hour standoff with police in Ludlow on July 18.
He was released from Baystate Medical Center to the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow, but was readmitted to that hospital Aug. 22 because of infections, his lawyer said.
Stuart, who was apparently distraught over a pending divorce, claimed in a letter he wrote to his wife to have shredded $1.5 million in cash, stocks and bonds and used the material to start the fire that severely damaged their home.