Kevin Cullen’s column today is on target with the proportionality and humanity themes regarding the the U.S. Attorneys office and the prosecution/suicide of Aaron Swartz.
Right now an on-line White House petition to fire Carmen Ortiz has more than the 25,000 signatures required for the President’s people to take a look at it.
Isn’t that the problem? Find a scape goat for institutional abuses combined with bureaucratic/personal self-interests that have been allowed to fester and strengthen over years?
This isn’t about Carmen Ortiz. She’s a political appointee who will be gone in a few years. Think about it. She’s in an office of career federal prosecutors and F.B.I agents.
Carmen got her teeth sharpened at the Middlesex County District Attorneys Office. The world champions of unreasonableness have been groomed there for years. Don’t get me started. (Not a knock against Gerry Leone, he’s a paradox. One of the most reasonable guys out there, but the Middlesex D.A.’s office’s reputation goes back decades, well before Gerry arrived on the scene)
But here in Boston there seems to be all sorts of shananigans going on.
The Tewksbury motel land grab
The ridiculous legal theory behind the John O’Brien indictments
The perjury case against Tom Finneran. A reading of the full deposition needs to be examined to see the extent of Finneran’s perjury. Harvey Silverglate says he was railroaded.
The reversal in positions regarding former federal prosecutors serving as judges for Whitey Bulger related cases.
THis is just the stuff off the top of my head but there are many everyday things that do not make the paper that are also outrageous.
The questions needed to be answered are:
Has the Boston Office of the U.S. Attorneys Office and individuals within that office acted unethically and/or illegally by allowing political and other unethical factors weigh in it’s prosecutorial decisions?
And
Has that Office and individuals within that Office committed unethical and/or illegal acts in pursuit of these prosecutions?
Congressman Capuano and Lynch should call for congressional hearings, as should Senator Warren.
The White House should appoint an independent investigator with subpoena powers to investigate the Boston branch of the Justice Department for unethical overreaching and such things.
None of this Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility crap.
Update David is right on with Chuck Turner. Put a few c-notes in your palm and shake hands with Chuck Turner. WTF?
comparing the treatment of Lanza and Finneran an absurdity & possibly the dumbest thing you have ever wrote. Please don’t use this tragedy and abuse of power in your quest to rehabilitate-by-proxy your favorite former hack king.
Plenty of people have, unlike Finneran, actually gone to jail for lying in federal court, Lanza was the only person in history to be facing thirty (30!) years for downloading too many old academic articles.
It took this tragedy to showcase the abuses in prosecutions.
An abusive federal prosecution is an abusive federal prosecution.
So you disagree with Harvey Silverglate on the Finneran matter scout?
I guess it’s not abusive prosecution when the feds go after someone you don’t like, aye scout?
The usually slimey Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is launching an investigation into the prosecution and had strong words against Ortiz and for Mr. Swartz, our own Sen. Warren echoed these comments and supports the investigation. We will see how far down the rabbit hole this goes.
You’ve been peddling this bs about Finneran & the “full transcript” literally for years and through hundreds of posts. It’s clear that your not interested in actually having that out there for examination & debate, or else you would have gotten it by now- in fact, this lack of a transcript online is somehow the whole thin reed on which you often hang your defense of the disgraced former Speaker. That, and invoking the name Silverglate, of course. Tell you what though, in the extremely unlikely event you bother to publish the full transcript I’ll volunteer to take the other side of the debate. While the prospect of debating you on your own chosen ground might be daunting, I’m not worried because there is near zero chance of that happening. You’ve proven the “full transcript” in question is worth far more to you unseen than seen.
Please refrain from throwing your pet hacks into the discussion of these other extremely serious and genuine cases of prosecutorial abuse. There is a serious problem here, and even (perhaps) a chance for some accountability as a lot of people are just now paying attention. Tossing in people like Finneran with real victims like Mr. Schwatz only muddles the water and weakens the case. It must be hard to resist associating the fallen King Tom with people who have genuinely gotten the shaft…but in the interest getting some justice when there might be some justice to be gotten you should try to. You can always resume beating your dead horse at a later date.
And no, whether I like someone or not has nothing to do with I call an abuse of prosecution. Perhaps you were thinking of yourself? I’m no big fan of Tim Cahill, but I don’t hesitate to say that if he still had either major party behind him he would never have been prosecuted as he was.