Archives for January 2010

One of the critical elements in next Tuesdays special senatorial election in Massachusetts is not about a Senate vote for or against government takeover of health care.  As is the case with all elections for national representation, the critical element has only and everything to do with ideology and character.  It is, one could say, a battle between good versus evil; one example of the good being those things in our nation’s laws that presume a person is innocent until proven guilty and shall be judged by a jury of their peers based on the weight of evidence.  Evil comes in the form of a lemming-like, pseudo-moralistic belief not that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, but that equality and therefore justice must, by any means possible, extend to outcomes, not effort.

Such evils have long tainted the American legal system and many are the resulting stories of those unjustly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit simply because of what can only be called moral lynchings; a driving, zealous need to pin the guilt somewhere…anywhere…to nobly insure a victim, even a manufactured victim, receives “equal justice”.  As our ability to use science in crime investigation becomes better and better, though, one sees the tragedies of such misplaced blindness and it is most unfortunate that one who now wishes to serve at a national level is, by all accounts, one of those who works not for good, but is instead party to the moral lynch mob pursuit of justice.

The story of the Amiraults case is a long one.  But it bears close scrutiny for, as with jetting down to Washington to meet with lobbyists to beg for special interest campaign contributions, using her position and state resources to work on her election campaign, and rushing so fast to put out a negative campaign ad against her opponent that the name of her state is misspelled, it demonstrates the ideology and character of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.

In a nutshell, the case against the Amiraults was one of child abuse.  Evidence came in the form of children’s testimony to things like seeing a 4-year old being raped with a butcher knife, amazingly with not a drop of blood shed, let alone evidence of injury; the public anal rape of a child tied to a tree in front of the school, and cutting off the leg of a squirrel.  The defendents, two women and one man, were convicted and sent to prison; it was only many years later that any real justice prevailed, but it did not come through the efforts of Martha Coakley.

“…outraged, Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein presided over a widely publicized hearings into the case resulting in findings that all the children’s testimony was tainted. He said that “Every trick in the book had been used to get the children to say what the investigators wanted.” The Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly—which had never in its 27 year history taken an editorial position on a case—published a scathing one directed at the prosecutors “who seemed unwilling to admit they might have sent innocent people to jail for crimes that had never occurred.”

“It was clear, when Martha Coakley took over as the new Middlesex County district attorney in 1999, that public opinion was running sharply against the prosecutors in the case. Violet Amirault was now gone. Ill and penniless after her release, she had been hounded to the end by prosecutors who succeeded in getting the Supreme Judicial Court to void the women’s reversals of conviction. She lay waiting all the last days of her life, suitcase packed, for the expected court order to send her back to prison. Violet would die of cancer before any order came in September 1997.

“That left Cheryl alone, facing rearrest. In the face of the increasing furor surrounding the case, Ms. Coakley agreed to revise and revoke her sentence to time served—but certain things had to be clear, she told the press. Cheryl’s case, and that of Gerald, she explained, had nothing to do with one another—a startling proposition given the horrific abuse charges, identical in nature, of which all three of the Amiraults had been convicted.

“No matter: When women were involved in such cases, the district attorney explained, it was usually because of the presence of “a primary male offender.” According to Ms. Coakley’s scenario, it was Gerald who had dragged his mother and sister along. Every statement she made now about Gerald reflected the same view, and the determination that he never go free. No one better exemplified the mindset and will of the prosecutors who originally had brought this case.

“Before agreeing to revise Cheryl’s sentence to time served, Ms. Coakley asked the Amiraults’ attorney, James Sultan, to pledge—in exchange—that he would stop representing Gerald and undertake no further legal action on his behalf. She had evidently concluded that with Sultan gone—Sultan, whose mastery of the case was complete—any further effort by Gerald to win freedom would be doomed. Mr. Sultan, of course, refused.

In 2000, the Massachusetts Governor’s Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider a commutation of Gerald’s sentence. After nine months of investigation, the board, reputed to be the toughest in the country, voted 5-0, with one abstention, to commute his sentence. Still more newsworthy was an added statement, signed by a majority of the board, which pointed to the lack of evidence against the Amiraults, and the “extraordinary if not bizarre allegations” on which they had been convicted.”

None of this gave Martha Coakley pause.  Indeed, she continued to relentlessly pursue the matter, and eventually convinced the governor to deny Gerald Amirault’s parole in 2002.  He was finally paroled in 2004, but with such tight restrictions employment is pretty much impossible.  But at least he is “free”.

“Questioned about the Amiraults in the course of her current race for the U.S. Senate, she told reporters of her firm belief that the evidence against the Amiraults was “formidable” and that she was entirely convinced “those children were abused at day care center by the three defendants.”

“What does this say about her candidacy? (Ms. Coakley declined to be interviewed.) If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley’s concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.”

Though I know use of the word “wonderful” is dripping with sarcasm, in plain English, what we hear from Martha Coakley is the same frightening hypocrisy against which we, the people, are actively rallying.  Frankly, this is not a woman of good character; indeed her hands are almost as bloody from this particular witch hunt as were those of the senator she is seeking to replace.  The presence of such bloody hands should serve as fair warning to those who would still believe Coakley is in any way capable of or willing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.