[Note: Friends of Justice is a personal blog. I speak only for myself.]
Dear Editor:
I was disappointed that the Phoenix chose to describe Attorney General’s Martha Coakley’s stand against the health-care bill recently passed by the House of Representatives as “principled.” Coakley takes “principled” stands when they benefit her politically. And her more dubious stands are ignored by the adoring press.
How many voters, for example, know that she recently signed Massachusetts onto an amicus brief that advocates total immunity for prosecutors?
The case, now before the Supreme Court, concerns two Iowa African-Americans who were framed by prosecutors for a murder they did not commit. These two innocent men spent 25 years of their lives in prison. Because of Coakley, Massachusetts now supports the position that “There is no freestanding Constitutional ‘right not to be framed.’“ Coakley and the Iowa prosecutors argue that there would be a “chilling” effect if prosecutors were forced to obey the law. One would hope so.
Most, unfortunately, have forgotten Coakley’s own checkered history as a prosecutor in the Middlesex DA’s office. She was an avid witch hunter while the daycare sex panic still raged. She came to prominence prosecuting Ray and Shirley Souza, two grandparents who were charged with bizarre sex crimes they did not commit. She also fought to send the Amiraults back to prison and successfully lobbied against commuting Gerald Amirault’s sentence.
Halfway intelligent people who have looked into these cases have quickly realized that no crimes were committed and that the Amiraults and Souzas were convicted on fabricated unreliable evidence. Unfortunately, few voters remember that Coakley had anything to do with these cases.
Coakley is not “principled.” She is ruthlessly ambitious. If would be tragic should she be elected to succeed Ted Kennedy.
Robert B. Chatelle
