Ivan Cheung, the former State Street vice president charged with serial rapes years ago, was back in Suffolk Superior Court for a brief moment Wednesday morning. His case was continued to April 24.
Cheung, 44, appeared in a suit and sat with his attorney, Peter Parker, in a gallery pew as the pair waited for the prosecutors to show up for the 10 a.m. hearing in which still-sealed defense motions to dismiss the case were to be argued.
Prosecutors Ian Polumbaum and Erin Murphy were 15 minutes late because they had just won their sentencing recommendations in the case of ex-MBTA Transit Police Officer Shawn McCarthy for the rape of two women while on duty in 2012. That sentencing took place on the floor above.
When they did arrive, the expected argument did not take place. Instead, Judge Michael Doolin continued the motions arguments to April 24.
Cheung was in 2022 charged with the serial rape of women and girls twenty years ago. Prosecutors couldn’t overcome the statute of limitations placed on the rape of adults and so as the case continued, the charges of alleged rapes against women were tossed and the case honed down to the child rapes that took place in 2005 and 2006.
Cheung has purportedly requested the remaining charges be tossed, largely on the grounds that the prosecution should not have used the adult rapes as evidence of a pattern during the grand jury presentation since they were unprosecutable crimes.
“Purported” because the defense motions were filed under seal and their details are only picked up from the prosecution’s response motion. They argued in their response that whether the alleged rapes were prosecutable or not was beside the point, as they still worked to establish a pattern that could be identified in the rapes of the children.