Lawyer takes aim at police in arraignment

 A Dorchester man accused of fatally stabbing 20-year-old Daniel Yakovleff in January was held without bail yesterday despite an animated defense by an attorney who took aim at homicide investigators and implicated a third suspect in the killing.

While family and friends of Yakovleff looked on, attorney John Swomley attacked the state’s argument that the victim and accused killer Steven Odegard were the only people inside Odegard’s Tuttle Street residence on Jan. 17.

“It’s apparent that Boston Homicide cannot walk and chew gum at the same time,” Swomley said. “There is ample evidence that a third party did this.”

Yakovleff was found in Odegard’s bed that morning, dead from 10 stab wounds and with a kitchen knife protruding from his chest, according to Assistant District Attorney Judith Lyons.

After many minutes of railing against the state, Swomley was cut off by Suffolk Superior Court Clerk Magistrate Gary D. Wilson and handed a large stack of grand jury testimony from Lyons, who questioned Swomley’s ability to provide defense without seeing it.

Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, called Swomley’s accusations “bizarre.”
“We very often hear self-serving statements from defendants. Today we heard them from an attorney,” Wark said.

Lyons told the court that Odegard met Yakovleff at a bar and invited him to his home. Odegard called his employer at 2:45 a.m. to say he would not be in the next day, and later phoned 911 to report finding the victim’s body, Lyons said.

Lyons said that DNA and fingerprints show only two people inside the residence.