Murdered Barrington Pastor's Husband Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity

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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The husband of a beloved Great Barrington pastor was found not guilty by reason of insanity Wednesday morning of her 2007 murder.

Henry E. Dozier Jr., 65, has been been held at Bridgewater State Hospital, a medium security facility for evaluating and treating suspects and housing the criminally insane, since being charged with the murder of the Rev. Esther Dozier, then 65, on June 11, 2007.

Esther Dozier, the first woman pastor of Clinton AME Zion Church in Great Barrington, was found stabbed to death at about 6:30 a.m. on June 11 in couple's Railroad Street home. Henry Dozier, her husband of 42 years, was arrested in a Lenox parking lot, and taken to Berkshire Medical Center for possibly swallowing poison. He'd allegedly crashed his truck earlier that morning and walked away from the scene.

The couple were married in Clinton AME, where civil rights leader W.E.B. Dubois once regularly worshipped. Henry Dozier was also a deacon at the 139-year-old church.

According to the Berkshire County district attorney's office, he appeared before Berkshire Superior Court Judge John J. Agostini in a jury-waived trial on Wednesday.

He was found not guilty by reason of insanity on single counts of second-degree murder, leaving the scene of a property-damage accident and operating to endanger.

Agostini ordered him committeed to Bridgewater State for observation and evaluation. Dozier's case will be back in court on June 30, 2009 for an update on the evaluation process. 

The investigation was conducted by members of the Great Barrington Police Department, state police detectives assigned to the district attorney's office and members of the state police Crime Scene Services Unit.  
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State Fire Marshal: New Tracking Tool Identifies 50 Lithium-Ion Battery Fires

STOW, Mass. — The Massachusetts Department of Fire Services' new tool for tracking lithium-ion battery fires has helped to identify 50 such incidents in the past six months, more than double the annual average detected by a national fire data reporting system, said State Fire Marshal Jon M. Davine.
 
The Department of Fire Services launched its Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Investigative Checklist on Oct. 13, 2023. It immediately went into use by the State Police Fire & Explosion Investigation Unit assigned to the State Fire Marshal's office, and local fire departments were urged to adopt it as well. 
 
Developed by the DFS Fire Safety Division, the checklist can be used by fire investigators to gather basic information about fires in which lithium-ion batteries played a part. That information is then entered into a database to identify patterns and trends.
 
"We knew anecdotally that lithium-ion batteries were involved in more fires than the existing data suggested," said State Fire Marshal Davine. "In just the past six months, investigators using this simple checklist have revealed many more incidents than we've seen in prior years."
 
Prior to the checklist, the state's fire service relied on battery fire data reported to the Massachusetts Fire Incident Reporting System (MFIRS), a state-level tool that mirrors and feeds into the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS). NFIRS tracks battery fires but does not specifically gather data on the types of batteries involved. Some fields do not require the detailed information that Massachusetts officials were seeking, and some fires may be coded according to the type of device involved rather than the type of battery. Moreover, MFIRS reports sometimes take weeks or months to be completed and uploaded.
 
"Investigators using the Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Checklist are getting us better data faster," said State Fire Marshal Davine. "The tool is helpful, but the people using it are the key to its success."
 
From 2019 to 2023, an average of 19.4 lithium-ion battery fires per year were reported to MFIRS – less than half the number identified by investigators using the checklist over the past six months. The increase since last fall could be due to the growing number of consumer devices powered by these batteries, increased attention by local fire investigators, or other factors, State Fire Marshal Davine said. For example, fires that started with another item but impinged upon a battery-powered device, causing it to go into thermal runaway, might not be categorized as a battery fire in MFIRS or NFIRS.
 
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