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On Tuesday Cheryl
Amirault's attorneys were due to
surrender their client for her
return to prison--the result
mandated by the decision made two
months ago by the Supreme Judicial
Court of Massachusetts. Justices
Margaret Marshall (shortly
thereafter appointed chief justice
of the court), Roderick L. Ireland,
John M. Greaney, Ruth I. Abrams and
Neil L. Lynch signed the decision,
written by departing Chief Justice
Herbert P. Wilkins, reinstating Ms.
Amirault's conviction, previously
overturned by two lower-court
judges.
The decision
provoked an extraordinary outpouring
of response in which the court stood
accused, along with the prosecutors,
of perpetrating a travesty of
justice, as an editorial in the
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly
described it. The storm of reaction
to this case and to the court
itself--best exemplified, perhaps,
by William Raspberry's Oct. 11
Washington Post column titled
"Massachusetts's Mr. Magoo
Court"--now comes from many
quarters, within and outside the
state.
On top of all
this came this week's surrender date
and the imminent spectacle of Cheryl
Amirault in a courtroom again, this
time to be ordered back to
Framingham prison. That this scene
was not played out was due mainly to
the new Middlesex County District
Attorney Martha Coakley--not around
for the original prosecution of the
Amirault case--who came to the
conclusion that Ms. Amirault should
serve no more time, and that Ms.
Coakley would not oppose the motion
to revise the sentence to time
served.
Instead, she
concluded that Ms. Amirault should
be given 10 years probation. As
indeed she was, by order of the
court, and with the district
attorney's consent, in a Boston
courtroom yesterday morning.
It could not have
been easy for the district attorney
to come to this decision, given the
passions and investment in this case
on the prosecutors' side.
The prosecutor's
difficulties were clearly evident in
at least one of the stipulations she
demanded in exchange for her
agreement not to oppose the sentence
revision--namely that Ms. Amirault
not give any television interviews,
though she could speak to print
reporters and on the radio. Further,
the district attorney herself and
her staff would, according to this
stipulation, also refuse to give
television interviews on the case.
This prohibition unsurprisingly
provoked no little outrage among
television reporters. Print
journalists in turn confronted the
judgment--implicit in this
prohibition--about their relative
lack of importance.
The conditions of
the probation specify that Ms.
Amirault cannot contact the supposed
victims or their families, can have
no unsupervised contact with
children and must agree not to
profit as a result of the crimes for
which she was convicted.
The more serious
stipulation of the agreement with
the district attorney required
Cheryl Amirault to give up all
further court pursuits and efforts
to overturn her conviction--a
stipulation she and her lawyers
agreed to. This agreement, they say,
will have no negative impact on the
most important effort still
ahead--the case of her
still-imprisoned brother, Gerald
Amirault. |