BOSTON, Sept. 18, 2014— A Superior Court judge has denied a motion for a new trial by the man who murdered off-duty Revere Police Officer Daniel Talbot, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced.

In a decision filed Friday and received by prosecutors late yesterday, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Patrick Brady denied the motion filed by ROBERT IACOVIELLO, Jr. (D.O.B. 6/19/87), who is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted him of second-degree murder in Talbot’s 2007 shooting death.

The motion centered around the claims of CRAIG SMITH (D.O.B. 2/10/69), a convicted double murderer turned informant with a documented history of seeking personal benefit by providing investigators with information that has been consistently demonstrated to be unsubstantiated or false.

In his motion, Iacoviello argued that he deserved a new trial because Smith – who is currently serving two consecutive life sentences for a 2006 double murder in Allston/Brighton – claimed that a witness in Iacoviello’s trial had confessed to providing false testimony.

At trial, the witness testified that Iacoveillo confessed to the killing while the two were cellmates at the Dartmouth House of Correction.  Iacoviello now claims that that witness in turn confessed to Smith that Iacoviello did not admit to the murder.  Brady found that Smith’s claims were not truthful and were simply the latest in a series of acts intended to gain personal benefit.

“He is a dangerous and violent felon with convictions for murder (2), and robbery (2) and drug dealing,” Brady wrote of Smith. “He lies when it suits his purposes.  He has no credibility whatsoever.”

Brady cited several cases in which Smith provided false information, including that of CALVIN CARNES (D.O.B. 8/8/86), who was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder for killing four young men inside a Bourneside Street basement recording studio.  In a ruling last year on a similar motion filed by Carnes, Smith’s claims were found to be “without merit.”

Iacoviello’s one-time cellmate was one of 43 witnesses called by prosecutors over the course of three weeks during Iacoviello’s 2010 trial, during which prosecutors proved that Iacoviello was one of a group of associates summoned to a field behind Revere High School in the early hours of Sept. 27, 2007, by DEREK LODIE (D.O.B. 1/28/80), who had exchanged words with Talbot and others who were gathered there drinking and socializing.  After arriving at the scene, Iacoviello drew a semiautomatic 9 mm handgun and fired two shots, one of which struck Talbot in the head.  He succumbed to the injury hours later.

Also on trial with Iacoviello was JAMES HEANG (D.O.B. 6/19/90), whom jurors convicted of being an accessory to Talbot’s murder after the fact.  Lodie pleaded guilty to accessory before the fact; his girlfriend, GIA NAGY (D.O.B. 6/2/90), pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact.  All received state prison sentences.

Assistant District Attorney Edmond Zabin, chief of the DA’s Homicide Unit, prosecuted the case at trial.  Kara Hayes, director of the DA’s Victim Witness Assistance Program, was the assigned victim-witness advocate.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.