Three brothers charged with a 2020 murder will remain behind bars. The decision comes just hours after a Superior Court judge cleared the way for their release.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) issued an emergency stay Monday, temporarily blocking bail for Billoeum, Billy, and Channa Phan. The stay freezes a decision by Middlesex Superior Court Justice Christopher Barry-Smith, who had previously ruled that the “equities of the case” justified bail after five years of pretrial detention.
The initial order to grant bail was not based on the strength of the murder charges, which the judge acknowledged as “extremely serious,” but rather on the conduct of the prosecution.
Judge Barry-Smith found that the current delay in the trial is “attributable in full to the prosecution.” At the heart of the controversy is the late disclosure of what the judge called the “Quigley factor.”
State Police homicide detective Scott Quigley, a lead investigator in the Phan case, was involved in a fatal, on-duty crash in December 2023. Hospital records allegedly show Quigley was over the legal alcohol limit. However, the Commonwealth did not disclose this information to the defense until January 2026, during jury selection in the Phan brother’s 2nd trial.
The judge noted that the brothers have been held without bail for over five years and that a previous attempt to try the case in 2024 ended in a mistrial.
Under the terms of the now-stayed order, each defendant would have been eligible for release on $25,000 cash bail under strict conditions, including full-time home confinement and GPS monitoring.
“I know that some family members are looking at that and possibly maybe taking out a large loan or maybe a mortgage on a house… It’s my understanding that there may be some possibility at that $25,000,” said William Dolan, an attorney for Channa Phan.
The Commonwealth immediately appealed the ruling to the state’s highest court, arguing that the defendants should remain held without bail given the nature of the charges and their criminal histories.
SJC Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt granted a temporary stay of the bail order today. This means that even if the families of the defendants were to post the $75,000 total bail, the brothers cannot be released.
The defendants remain “committed without bail” while the SJC reviews whether Justice Barry-Smith acted correctly by granting bail as a remedy for the prosecution’s disclosure delays.
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