CLT
UPDATE
Monday, October 20, 2003
Romney: reformer or enabler?
Adding a famously blunt voice to the State Ethics Commission, Governor Mitt Romney yesterday tapped as chairman a retired judge who once called former Senate president William M. Bulger "a corrupt midget."...
The 25-year-old ethics panel is charged with enforcing conflict-of-interest laws and is supposed to crack down on public employees who use their office to advance their private interests. The committee has five members appointed to staggered, five-year terms.
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation, said the commission has been less than assertive in some cases, in part because it is hamstrung by rules formulated by the Legislature, which created it. But Anderson said Daher may be able to carve out a more active role for the panel by dint of his powerful personality -- and his personal experience.
"There's nothing like having somebody who has been treated unethically to try to make some changes because you know what it feels like," she said.
Anderson was referring to Daher's 1981 battle with Bulger, who cut Daher's Housing Court budget and his salary after the judge refused to make a patronage hire Bulger wanted.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Ex-judge to lead ethics panel
The state Parole Board has voted to grant parole to Gerald
Amirault, who has served 17 years in prison for his conviction in one of the country's most infamous cases of child sexual abuse.
Amirault, sentenced to 30 to 40 years for raping and molesting nine children at his family's Fells Acres Day School in Malden, is set to be released in late April. Middlesex County prosecutors now have six months to decide, as they do with all paroled sex offenders, whether they will seek to have him civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person....
Amirault, 49, has maintained his innocence since he was first accused nearly 20 years ago of molesting the children he was paid to watch....
Two years ago, Amirault sought to have his sentence commuted, arguing that it should be reduced because it was longer than the sentences of others convicted of similar crimes. Commuting the sentence would have made him eligible for parole sooner.
At the time, the Parole Board, acting in its dual role as the Advisory Board of Pardons, unanimously recommended that former acting governor Jane Swift commute Amirault's sentence, noting that it was significantly longer than the sentences of his mother and sister.
The board sparked controversy by questioning whether Amirault received a fair trial, although the board members stressed that they did not consider his guilt or innocence....
Yesterday, Governor Mitt Romney said that he has no authority to challenge the decision to release
Amirault. He said he didn't know enough about the case to discuss the legal details.
"The Parole Board is independent," Romney said. "I am not going to second-guess their decision."
But, he added, "There is no crime more disgusting or revolting than a crime against a child."
Former attorney general Scott Harshbarger, the Middlesex district attorney when the case was prosecuted, called the decision to release Amirault "unfortunate." He was concerned, he said, that the parole decision not be seen as an exoneration of
Amirault, whose convictions stand.
"I think we often forget there are a lot of victims out there, people whose lives have been dramatically changed," he said.
The Boston Globe
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Board grants parole to Amirault
Mr. Amirault's freedom could have been derailed by one factor of consequence to Department of Corrections parole boards -- namely the prisoner's refusal to agree that he was guilty. Like his mother and sister, who were also wrongly accused but were released earlier, Mr. Amirault refused to attend sex offender classes despite what it could cost him. They refused to do anything that would suggest there was any merit to the charges against them....
By now, too, the recognition that this prosecution -- and other child abuse cases like it around the country -- was built on concocted testimony has become widespread. So widespread that it is now the sort of thing studied in colleges and universities....
The parole board noted Friday that Mr. Amirault had been convicted of serious crimes and served 17 years -- and that this was surely enough to satisfy justice. In fact, justice would have been better served had this prosecution never been brought, and if the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had not repeatedly and blatantly upheld the prosecutors even in the face of overwhelming, documented evidence that the testimony had been manufactured....
Amid the rejoicing on Friday, there was no lack of awareness of the possibility that something might yet go wrong. Under Massachusetts law, Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley could still try to have Mr. Amirault committed, parole notwithstanding, as a Sexually Dangerous Person....
The Wall Street Journal
Monday, October 20, 2003
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Gerald Amirault's Day
A Quote for the Record
Democratic lawmakers are pushing to name the Big Dig's crown jewel tunnel after the late U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., backing off a deal with Gov. Mitt Romney to call it the "Liberty Tunnel." ...
The naming saga isn't yet etched in stone. Senate Minority Leader Brian P. Lees has vowed to stall the bill, and Republicans unsuccessfully tried to attach an amendment naming the new tunnel the "Taxpayers' Tunnel."
"They should be getting the primacy of the credit, not someone who was getting paid to do their job in representing Massachusetts' interests," said Sen. Robert L. Hedlund (R-Weymouth).
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Dems Tip tunnel debate:
Bill bucks gov to honor O'Neill
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Is Governor Mitt Romney a reformer or an enabler?
That's the question we confronted last Friday when
he named Democratic former state attorney general and former Middlesex
County district attorney L. Scott Harshbarger chairman of a new
commission the governor created to review the state's prison system.
This followed on the heels of another Romney
appointment on Tuesday when he swore in Judge E. George Daher, retired chief justice of the Boston Housing
Court and Billy Bulger nemesis, as chairman of the State Ethics
Commission.
Daher was an excellent choice and will be a perfect fit
for the task of enforcing state ethics laws. After his experience under
the heel of then-Senate President Bulger, this man understands ethical deficiencies
firsthand.
Harshbarger is another creature entirely.
On the day Romney announced his appointments to the prison
review commission with Harshbarger standing by his side, the state Parole Board
announced granting parole of Gerald Amirault. It was Harshbarger's
relentless persecution of the Amiraults as Middlesex County DA that
created this travesty and helped launch him into higher office.
When asked about the parole at his news conference,
Romney responded: "The Parole Board is independent. I am not going to second-guess their decision."
Then he added almost compulsively, "There is no crime more disgusting or revolting than a crime against a child."
I wonder if he unequivocally supports motherhood, the
flag and apple pie too -- if he'd dare take a stand one way or the other
without fear of offending ... someone? I thought governors were gray
only in California, at least until Schwarzenegger defeated him. But come
to think of it, Romney waffled on Arnold too.
Gov. Swift's refusal to commute Gerald Amirault's
sentence -- despite the unanimous recommendation of the parole board --
was the final straw for her political aspirations. That one act
turned even her last standing defender, Barbara, hard against her.
Swift's refusal led to Barbara's call a few days later to Mitt
Romney at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, encouraging him to come
home and run for governor against Swift. Jane was driven from office and
sent packing out to Williamstown with tail between her legs.
Mitt's now governor, but ... make that Governor But.
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Finally, what's with the silly Beacon Hill dust-up
over the naming of a tunnel? Legislators are about to confront another
budget "shortfall" of some $2 billion but nonetheless they've
got time to have a food fight over naming rights, the Democrats' Tip O'Neill
Tunnel or the governor's Liberty Tunnel -- an issue most citizens don't
give a hoot about.
If it's important that the tunnel have a name, the
only one who seems to get it is state Sen. Bob Hedlund R-Weymouth). He
proposed naming it after those who sacrificed to build it, then
sacrificed again and again as costs skyrocketed year after year. Sen.
Hedlund's naming proposal didn't stand a chance, after all, how many on
Beacon Hill consider taxpayers as anything more than cash cows to be
milked?
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Chip
Ford |
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Ex-judge to lead ethics panel
By Scott S. Greenberger, Globe Staff
Adding a famously blunt voice to the State Ethics Commission, Governor Mitt Romney yesterday tapped as chairman a retired judge who once called former Senate president William M. Bulger "a corrupt midget."
At a State House swearing-in ceremony, Romney praised Judge E. George
Daher, the retired chief justice of the Boston Housing Court, as a "straight shooter" unafraid "to cross the political power structure and take on insiders." Daher succeeds Augustus F. Wagner Jr. as the unpaid chairman of the commission.
The 25-year-old ethics panel is charged with enforcing conflict-of-interest laws and is supposed to crack down on public employees who use their office to advance their private interests. The committee has five members appointed to staggered, five-year terms.
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation, said the commission has been less than assertive in some cases, in part because it is hamstrung by rules formulated by the Legislature, which created it. But Anderson said Daher may be able to carve out a more active role for the panel by dint of his powerful personality -- and his personal experience.
"There's nothing like having somebody who has been treated unethically to try to make some changes because you know what it feels like," she said.
Anderson was referring to Daher's 1981 battle with Bulger, who cut Daher's Housing Court budget and his salary after the judge refused to make a patronage hire Bulger wanted.
In 1987, when Governor Michael Dukakis was running for president, Daher accused Dukakis of coddling Bulger and questioned the Massachusetts governor's fitness for the Oval Office: "How can he stand up to the Russians if he can't stand up to a corrupt midget?"
Earlier this year, Romney took on Bulger when he sought to eliminate Bulger's job as the University of Massachusetts president, a move widely interpreted as a symbolic attack on the personification of the Beacon Hill culture Romney campaigned against.
But yesterday Romney denied that his appointment of Daher had anything to do with their shared history of conflict with
Bulger, and Daher referred to his own clash with Bulger as "ancient history."
"Judge Daher has compiled a track record of unblemished integrity and unflinching dedication to the values of honest and ethical government," Romney said before swearing in Daher under a portrait of James Michael Curley, who was less than an ethical paragon as governor and Boston mayor.
In his brief remarks, Daher said that "public service is not self service."
"I will never let the end justify the means," he said.
Daher, 71, who retired from the Housing Court last year after three decades on the bench, grew up in a cold-water flat in a South End tenement where four families shared two bathrooms.
During the winters, he and his sister collected coal at a railyard to heat the family's apartment. He escaped that crushing poverty with a college education and stints as a pharmacist, a teacher, and a lawyer, but he says the memory of it never left him during his years on the court.
Daher helped save low-rent units from demolition, held landlords accountable for code violations, and fought to stamp out the remaining cold-water flats.
Daher earned a reputation for bluntness from the bench: He ordered a landlord to live for a time in his own dilapidated building, and ruled that a property owner had to trade apartments with a disgruntled tenant.
Daher once made a 3 a.m. surprise visit to a property to find out whether drug dealers were operating there, and one of his rulings cleared the way for the Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter, to move to the South End.
Earlier this year, Daher was the hearing officer in the judicial misconduct case against Judge Maria I. Lopez. Lopez was charged with ethics violations after she shouted down prosecutors while sentencing a transgendered man to home detention and probation for kidnapping and sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy.
In his ruling, Daher wrote that Lopez's unethical conduct and her "feeble" attempts to cover it up could have warranted her removal from the bench. In typical form, Daher concluded that Lopez acted more like TV's "Judge Judy."
Pam Wilmot, executive director of the government watchdog group Common Cause Massachusetts, said Daher and the other newly named ethics commission member, Boston University law professor Tracey
Maclin, are the sort of appointments that will strengthen the commission.
"An ideal appointment is a person with the highest ethical standards, a superior intellect, and the ability to rock the boat when necessary," Wilmot said.
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The Boston Globe
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Board grants parole to Amirault
By Kathleen Burge, Globe Staff
The state Parole Board has voted to grant parole to Gerald Amirault, who has served 17 years in prison for his conviction in one of the country's most infamous cases of child sexual abuse.
Amirault, sentenced to 30 to 40 years for raping and molesting nine children at his family's Fells Acres Day School in Malden, is set to be released in late April. Middlesex County prosecutors now have six months to decide, as they do with all paroled sex offenders, whether they will seek to have him civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person.
The decision announced yesterday could signal the end of the notorious sexual abuse case that spanned nearly two decades and dogged several governors. The children told lurid tales of sexual abuse, involving robots and the torture of animals, and the case helped spawn the national debate about the reliability of testimony from children. It was one of a host of mass child abuse cases at the time, including the Virginia McMartin Preschool in California.
"This is not a triumphant day for Gerald and his family," said James L. Sultan, Amirault's lawyer. "He is still in prison, and his wrongful conviction remains on the books. But it is a good day, a day on which his family's long and courageous struggle for justice has achieved an important goal."
Amirault, 49, has maintained his innocence since he was first accused nearly 20 years ago of molesting the children he was paid to watch. Yesterday, his family said they were counting the days until his release.
"It's bittersweet, but we just want him home," said his wife, Patti. "We are very grateful to the Parole Board."
His daughter, Katie, said she hopes her father can participate in her wedding, scheduled for July. "He can walk me down the aisle," she said. "It kills me to think he couldn't."
But parents of Amirault's sexual abuse victims said they were troubled by his early release and especially, they said, by his steadfast declaration of innocence.
"I would say he's a threat because, once again, he's not admitting guilt," said Paul B. Bennett, whose daughter, Jennifer, was abused by the
Amiraults. "You're putting a dangerous man back out on the streets."
In the Parole Board's brief 3-to-0 decision dated Thursday, the board members noted that Amirault's prison record was good and that he has strong family and community support. "Although Mr. Amirault stands convicted of serious offenses, it appears that justice has been served by his seventeen years of incarceration," the board wrote.
As a parolee, Amirault must abide by a list of conditions, including requirements that he avoid his victims and that any time spent with victims must be supervised. He must also pass regular alcohol and drug tests and register as a sex offender.
Amirault became eligible for parole this year based on the length of his sentence and submitted a request.
Two years ago, Amirault sought to have his sentence commuted, arguing that it should be reduced because it was longer than the sentences of others convicted of similar crimes. Commuting the sentence would have made him eligible for parole sooner.
At the time, the Parole Board, acting in its dual role as the Advisory Board of Pardons, unanimously recommended that former acting governor Jane Swift commute Amirault's sentence, noting that it was significantly longer than the sentences of his mother and sister.
The board sparked controversy by questioning whether Amirault received a fair trial, although the board members stressed that they did not consider his guilt or innocence. But Swift rejected the board's recommendation, saying the sentence was appropriate and in line with others.
Last March, Amirault once again asked the board to recommend that his prison sentence be commuted. This time, however, the board denied his request, because he was just months from being eligible for parole.
While the governor and the Executive Council make the final decision about commuting a sentence, the Parole Board makes the final decision about parole. Yesterday, three members of the board participated in the unanimous decision: Daniel M. Dewey, Joyce Hooley, and John P.
Kivlan.
Amirault was the sole remaining family member in prison for the Fells Acres scandal. His mother, Violet, and his sister, Cheryl Amirault
LeFave, were convicted in 1987 of a combined five counts of rape of a child. They were both released on appeal in 1995, and Violet Amirault died two years later.
In 1999, after several more appeals, prosecutors finally agreed that LeFave should not return to prison in exchange for not profiting from the case and dropping a quest to clear her name. A judge reduced her sentence to the time she already had served, eight years on a sentence of eight to 20 years.
Yesterday, an emotional LeFave said she was looking forward to spending time with her brother at home. LeFave said she had a hard time adjusting to daily life after her release.
"People feel like when they see me, they have to hug me," she said. "I feel like they get a sense of energy from what I've gone through. It's inspirational."
Although Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley had opposed Amirault's parole, her office offered a muted response to yesterday's announcement.
The conditions of Amirault's parole should minimize his risk to the community, said Coakley's spokesman, Seth
Horwitz. The office hasn't yet decided whether to seek to have Amirault civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person, he said. To bring such a case, prosecutors would have to prove in court that Amirault remains dangerous and likely to commit assault.
If Amirault were civilly committed, he would be held at the Massachusetts Treatment Center in the Bridgewater Corrections complex and would have to appeal each year to be released.
Yesterday, Governor Mitt Romney said that he has no authority to challenge the decision to release
Amirault. He said he didn't know enough about the case to discuss the legal details.
"The Parole Board is independent," Romney said. "I am not going to second-guess their decision."
But, he added, "There is no crime more disgusting or revolting than a crime against a child."
Former attorney general Scott Harshbarger, the Middlesex district attorney when the case was prosecuted, called the decision to release Amirault "unfortunate." He was concerned, he said, that the parole decision not be seen as an exoneration of
Amirault, whose convictions stand.
"I think we often forget there are a lot of victims out there, people whose lives have been dramatically changed," he said.
The mother of one of those victims, Barbara Standke, heard the news yesterday morning when a parole officer called her. Her son, Brian
Martinello, works construction, and she couldn't reach him during the day to break the news.
She was resigned to Amirault's release. "I knew it was going to happen some time," she said. "If he got out three years from now, 10 years from now, it's not going to change what happened to my son."
Globe reporter Sean P. Murphy and Globe correspondents Heather Allen and Martha Bartle contributed to this report.
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The Wall Street Journal
Monday, October 20, 2003
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Gerald Amirault's Day
The end of Gerald Amirault's long struggle for freedom is in sight. A Massachusetts parole board saw to that with a unanimous decision on Friday granting his petition for release -- officially set to occur at the end of April.
It was a joyous day for this prisoner of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, behind bars since his conviction, in 1986, as a molester of nursery school children in a case based on bogus testimony dragged from browbeaten child witnesses. It was an exultant day too for his family, which has kept its hopes up despite years of having them dashed.
Mr. Amirault's freedom could have been derailed by one factor of consequence to Department of Corrections parole boards -- namely the prisoner's refusal to agree that he was guilty. Like his mother and sister, who were also wrongly accused but were released earlier, Mr. Amirault refused to attend sex offender classes despite what it could cost him. They refused to do anything that would suggest there was any merit to the charges against them.
It no doubt helped that two of the three members of the parole board had also served on the Governor's Board of Pardons, which had earlier commuted Mr. Amirault's sentence, only to be overruled by former Governor Jane Swift, who was then hopelessly scrambling to win re-election. The pair were also among the signers of a statement that there were "real and substantial doubts" about the merits of the Amirault prosecutions.
By now, too, the recognition that this prosecution -- and other child abuse cases like it around the country -- was built on concocted testimony has become widespread. So widespread that it is now the sort of thing studied in colleges and universities. The 49-year-old Mr. Amirault is about to finish his liberal arts degree in prison. Not long ago he had the surprising experience of opening a sociology textbook, and finding there -- in a list of hysteria-driven prosecutions -- the Amirault case. Things have certainly come far since the day he was carted off to do 30-40 years, a despised cast-off from society.
The parole board noted Friday that Mr. Amirault had been convicted of serious crimes and served 17 years -- and that this was surely enough to satisfy justice. In fact, justice would have been better served had this prosecution never been brought, and if the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had not repeatedly and blatantly upheld the prosecutors even in the face of overwhelming, documented evidence that the testimony had been manufactured.
No less than three criminal court judges who knew the case had called for the
Amiraults' convictions to be reversed. Justice would have been served if Violet
Amirault, the proud principal of Fells Acres Day School, still headed the most esteemed nursery school in Malden, Massachusetts.
Amid the rejoicing on Friday, there was no lack of awareness of the possibility that something might yet go wrong. Under Massachusetts law, Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley could still try to have Mr. Amirault committed, parole notwithstanding, as a Sexually Dangerous Person. Someone so classified is required to live in a treatment facility for sex offenders until the state deems that person may go free. Fortunately, the chances that Ms. Coakley will do so appear to be slim.
The six months left until April 30 aren't much of a wait to a man already imprisoned 17 years -- although, if the DA officially declares she has no intention of trying to commit him as sexually dangerous, the wait could be much shorter. Gerald Amirault could then conceivably be home for Christmas with the wife and now grown children who have kept so long and faithful a vigil.
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The Boston Herald
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Dems Tip tunnel debate: Bill bucks gov to honor O'Neill
by Elisabeth J. Beardsley
Democratic lawmakers are pushing to name the Big Dig's crown jewel tunnel after the late U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., backing off a deal with Gov. Mitt Romney to call it the "Liberty Tunnel."
The naming of the new Interstate 93 tunnel has been the subject of hot dispute for six months on Beacon Hill, since Romney upset 10 years of unspoken plans to name the tunnel after O'Neill and instead proposed honoring the U.S. armed forces.
The Democrat-controlled Transportation Committee unexpectedly sprung a version of the bill yesterday that restores O'Neill's name to the longest stretch of Big Dig tunnel.
While dropping Romney's "Liberty Tunnel" idea altogether, the bill gives a nod to military service by naming the smaller Interstate 90 connector "Veterans' Tunnel."
Rank-and-file lawmakers demanded that homage be paid to O'Neill, who secured more than $8 billion in federal money for the Big Dig, said Senate Transportation Chairman Steven A. Baddour (D-Methuen).
"They said enough with politicizing this entire process," Baddour said. "This isn't about politics. We're honoring veterans and probably one of the greatest elected officials in Massachusetts' history."
The move reneges on a deal Romney cut in March with House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini to put O'Neill's name on the smaller I-90 connector.
Romney spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman stood by the "Liberty" moniker, pointing to Finneran and Travaglini's 6-month-old agreement. "Gov. Romney feels strongly that we should honor those men and women who have sacrificed for our nation," she said.
Finneran and Travaglini were unavailable for comment.
The naming saga isn't yet etched in stone. Senate Minority Leader Brian P. Lees has vowed to stall the bill, and Republicans unsuccessfully tried to attach an amendment naming the new tunnel the "Taxpayers' Tunnel."
"They should be getting the primacy of the credit, not someone who was getting paid to do their job in representing Massachusetts' interests," said Sen. Robert L. Hedlund (R-Weymouth).
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