MIT professor faces charge he staged own shooting

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A former professor at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the leading U.S. science universities, went on trial on Monday in a case that hinges on whether he shot himself and attempted to frame his son in a long-running family feud.

The case of John J. Donovan, who taught business at MIT for three decades until leaving in 1997 to found a consulting firm, has attracted attention because of his connection to the prestigious school and his prominence as an expert on business and technology.

Donovan was sitting in his car outside his consulting firm in December 2005 when he called police to say someone had shot him. He had one bullet wound in his abdomen, which hit no organs and which doctors described as "superficial," according to prosecutors.

Donovan, now 65, said his assailants were two masked men. But Massachusetts authorities say the business consultant shot himself with a plan to pin the crime on his son, with whom he had been locked in a long-running dispute over real estate.

"This is motivated by the defendant's desire for revenge on his eldest son as well as an attempt to gain an advantage ... in various lawsuits the defendant is engaged in," said Adrienne Lynch, Massachusetts assistant attorney general, in her opening statements in state superior court in Cambridge on Monday.

Donovan was charged with filing a false police report. If convicted, he faces up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $500. He is free on his own recognizance pending trial.

He told authorities that two men approached him in his white minivan and opened fire at close range, shooting out the driver's side window and wounding him in his abdomen. He said some of the bullets were deflected by a large belt buckle.

His attorney, Michael Doolin, denied Donovan staged the shooting. "He was attacked," Doolin said. "Individuals approached him; he was shot."

ESTRANGED CHILDREN

Donovan told police that his assailants and people who later made threatening phone calls said his oldest son, James Donovan, an employee of investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc., had arranged the attack.

A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined comment. James Donovan could not be reached for comment.

Donovan and his five estranged children have been in a legal battle over real estate for years, prosecutors said.

Lynch said investigators found 14 empty cartridges at the scene of the crime but not a matching number of projectiles.

She said that in the days after the incident, Donovan called authorities to say he had a large piece of wood in his car which could have absorbed some of the missing bullets.

"No one had said to the defendant that they had not found that many projectiles," Lynch said.

Doolin said the charges were the result of an investigation that was flawed in many ways. "There is no evidence that Mr. Donovan shot himself," Doolin said. "There is no evidence that he procured anyone to do so."

(Additional reporting by Joseph A. Giannone in New York)