Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Deval Patrick & Benjamin LaGuer?

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I just got a call from Boston Herald reporter Dave Wedge to say he’s doing a story for tomorrow’s paper  based on a testimonial on the Ben LaGuer Web site (among many) which reads:

“I therefore have serious misgivings about the integrity of the criminal justice system in this case, as I believe any citizen would.”  Deval Patrick, Former US Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

Wedge’s reporting on the LaGuer case to date has not been stellar. It’s actually been pretty rotten. Soon after the LaGuer Web site first launched he did an article based on a single anonymous source that he could have easily debunked had he done some more digging.

That’s water under the bridge.

LaGuer was convicted for a 1983 rape and has been in prison since. He steadfastly maintains his innocence in spite of an adverse 2002 DNA test that has since been discredited by four reputable DNA experts. The most recent being Harvard biologist Daniel Hartl.

Let’s hope Wedge gives this story a clear-eyed treatment.

As far as I know Patrick made the above comment before the DNA result. I don’t know the extent of his involvement in the case other than that many prominent people have criticized the process that convicted LaGuer. I’m curious to see what (if anything) Wedge comes up with.

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  1. my statcounter stats tell me that the Patrick Committee and the Reilly Committee were all over the http://www.BenLaGuer.com site right after this post went up. The Globe also paid a visit to the testimonials page. At least we know someone is reading Blue Mass Group.

    • Thanks for the heads-up. After the Herald story comes out, please post your evaluation of it. Sounds like another minor distraction along the campaign trail. Quite frankly, every time the Reilly camp has made an attack on Patrick (“Taj Deval” — “conflicts” re Ameriquest — etc.), our Berkshire volunteers have redoubled their efforts.

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      Sometimes all it takes is a gentle reminder that we can’t take anything for granted to get people motivated to work very hard for their candidate.

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      Gotta run — off to a meeting to plan our next round of canvasses, house parties, and phone banks. No time to worry about gossip and innuendo…

      • But I don’t want to jump to that conclusion. It could just be Dave Wedge thinking he has a new angle on this story. I would hope and expect that Gov. Reilly, Gov. Patrick or Gov. Gabrielli (ditto for Gov. Mihos, Gov. Healey or Gov. Ross, for that matter) will help see to it that an obvious injustice in the case of Commonwealth v. LaGuer will be recognized and addressed. Whatever happens I wouldn’t want to see it turned into a political football.

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        Funny thing is when I spoke with Wedge he didn’t seem to know that one of his bosses (Herald Sunday editor John Strahinich) was for a long time LaGuer’s most ardent advocate in the press.

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        We’ll see if Wedge pulls a story together. If so, I’ll be glad to give my critique: good, bad or indifferent.

      • Three “attacks” caused your volunteers to redouble their efforts each time?  They’re working eight times harder now than at the outset?  Either they were lazy as rocks at the beginning, or there are gonna be a lot of heart attacks in the Berkshires soon.

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        Seriously, everyone says “this will only make us work harder!”  No doubt — you’ve made your choice and will vote for Deval come what may.  And maybe you’ll work harder now that someone is asking questions for your candidate.  Good for you.  But it won’t keep voters and campaigns from continuing to ask questions.

        • Are you a backgammon player? Or a bridge regular?

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          You seem to take my redoubling comment quite literally, but I think the word is more often used in a figurative sense.

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          Be that as it may, I think you have it about right.

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          As for questions, great! I welcome them, especially those that have a galvanizing effect.

        • What questions might they be, sabutai? How about,

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          “Will it benefit our candidate if we give the Willie Horton treatment to Patrick for raising legitimate questions about a man’s innocence?”

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          or,

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          “Can we use this “issue” to create a vague sense in the voters that Patrick is soft on crime?”

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          I’ve quoted Mr. Dooley before to the effect that “politics ain’t beanbag.” But implying that Patrick is damaged goods because he had the courage to ask if the judicial system had convicted someone wrongfully is beneath the level of decency Tom Reilly has established in his career as a public servant. Tom should be angered and embarassed by this effort by his campaign, and he should repudiate this slime tactic immediately. 

          • I said “continuing to ask questions,” and you grab the latest circumstantial conspiracy theory off the shelf?  Is the part of the campaign when we get to learn about the candidates over already?

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            The Boulder police had a better case against Kerr than you do against Reilly.  But since I’m procrastinating right now, for snots and giggles, let’s say everything is true…everything.  Reilly’s campaign disgracefully did some research on an opposing candidate, shamefacedly found something questionable in his record, and horrifically told a journalist about it.  Acting like they were, oh, a political campaign.  Does that inherently mean the subject matter at hand is banned from discussion?

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            I hope the Patrick campaign is made of sterner stuff than this if they think they’ll get past Healey’s machine.

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            • Something like standing up for a man who, quite possibly, has been imprisoned for many years for a crime he didn’t commit? What about that is “questionable?”

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              You know, Tom Reilly may have made a legal mistake some months ago by trying to hush up the circumstances of the tragic deaths of those two young girls in the auto accident. It may also have been a public policy mistake, if it served to cover up the role of alcohol use by teens in causing the accident. But many of us understood the decent, human motivation behind the act: to help a grieving friend, and to do so without regard to the potential political damage it might do to Tom’s candidacy.

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              I’d like to believe that Tom Reilly would respect a fellow lawyer who stood up for someone who may have been wrongfully convicted. A Tom Reilly who would say to his staff, “I don’t care if it might help my candidacy, it’s wrong to smear someone for speaking out to protect the rights of a person who may be innocent.”

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              That is the kind of decent person many Reilly supporters have been telling us Tom is. Here’s his chance to show it.

      • I had a bit more time this evening so I went back and looked at the Statcounter statistics more carefully.

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        My data (and I’ve saved it) shows that the Tom Reilly Committee (IP Address: 68.236.107.244) came to the testimonials page of the LaGuer site at 2:24 p.m. and came back three more times between then and 2:41 p.m. The Herald (IP Address: 216.183.191.226) came to the site at 2:42 p.m.. Dave Wedge called me sometime around 3:15 p.m.. The time stamp on my post to BMG about that conversation is 15:39 (or 3:39 p.m.). The Deval Patrick Committee (IP Address: 68.236.111.194) first showed up at the site at 3:05 p.m. The Globe (IP Address 198.115.75.86) didn’t come until 4:06 p.m. and it came directly from my BMG post.

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        Now, could it be that the Reilly people came to the site and then called Wedge? Then Wedge went to the site and called the Patrick people? Once he spoke with them he then called me?

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        It does look that way. If so (and that’s an important caveat) I wonder what the motivation might be. It would be interesting to find out who at the Reilly Committee was at the site and if that person called Wedge. Wedge would be the one to know, if he were willing to say.

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        Maybe we’ll find out in the Herald tomorrow. Or maybe this minor intrigue will quietly go away. 

        • Well, you asked for my take. I might have more to add later, but here are my first thoughts.

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          Deval backs rapist‘s parole try
          By Dave Wedge
          Boston Herald Chief Enterprise Reporter
          Tuesday, August 29, 2006 – Updated: 12:32 AM EST

          Democratic candidate for governor Deval Patrick once joined other pols and lawyers in backing a convicted rapist’s bid for parole, support that is being highlighted on a Web site dedicated to the controversial case.  Patrick is among several high-profile politicians, attorneys and academics quoted on the site supporting Ben LaGuer, a former soldier convicted in 1984 of the vicious rape of a 59-year-old Leominster woman.  “I. . . have serious misgivings about the integrity of the criminal justice system in this case, as I believe any citizen would,” the site quotes Patrick as saying.  A spokesman confirmed Patrick’s support of LaGuer but said Patrick has not followed the case closely in recent years.  The state’s highest court is slated to decide this fall whether LaGuer should get a new trial because authorities withheld reports from defense attorneys that show fingerprints taken from a phone in the victim’s apartment did not match LaGuer.  LaGuer, 43, has lost several appeals and has repeatedly been denied parole, but has continually proclaimed his innocence in a relentless media campaign from behind bars. He suffered a major setback in 2002 when DNA tests he predicted would exonerate him instead linked him to the crime scene. LaGuer has since claimed DNA samples were mishandled.  The evidence-tampering charges recently prompted Rep. Ellen Story (D-Amherst) to solicit four top DNA experts, all of whom theorize that the samples in the case may have been contaminated. Others who have supported LaGuer include Sen. Jarrett Barrios (D-Cambridge), Sen. Pat Jehlen (D-Somerville), Sen. Dianne Wilkerson (D-Roxbury), Rep. Kay Khan (D-Newton), former Boston University Chancellor John Silber and Boston City Councilors Felix Arroyo and Chuck Turner.  LaGuer is not the first convicted violent felon Patrick has backed. When he was an attorney for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund in the 1980s, Patrick fought to save two cop killers from death row, winning one of the appeals.

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          First off, the skimpiness of the reporting taken together with the IP Address trail above makes me even more suspicious that the story is a Reilly campaign plant. I’d be interested to know if they would deny it and give another interpretation of the Statcounter evidence I posted last night. Joan Vennochi, are you listening?

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          Second, “Deval’s” (I’m not on a first name basis with any of the candidates but I suppose the Herald is) support of LaGuer is not exactly “highlighted” on the site, but a google search of both names will take you there. A similar search would bring you to this statement by the current Sunday editor of the Boston Herald:

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          “I believe that justice – and society – would be best served in this case if Mr. LaGuer were freed from prison.” – John Strahinich

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          Or this, from a formerly local media critic:

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          “A number of reporters have concluded that at the very least, his trial was a pretty odiferous piece of business.” – Mark Jurkowitz

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          Or this from another local journalist:

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          “Through thousands of dark nights in prison, holding his breath for years at a time in the hope of appeals, court reversals, Ben LaGuer has been suffering, and learning, for us all.” – Christopher Lydon

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          This list of former and current LaGuer supporters is long and includes his current pro bono attorney James C. Rehnquist who will be arguing for LaGuer in the Supreme Judicial Court this fall.

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          Third, and maybe this should be first. Referring to LaGuer as a “rapist” in the headline is unfair. I suppose that technically if a jury says someone is a rapist that makes it so. “A man convicted of rape” would have been equally accurate and would reflect the thinking of the four high level DNA experts who have publicly commented on the case. Those statements include:

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          “…many instances of DNA testing errors have led to the false conviction of innocent individuals… . It is my opinion that we have encountered such a case here.” – Theodore Kessis, Ph.D., Applied DNA Resources

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          “In summary, there are numerous deficiencies in this case relating to the criminal investigation, evidence collection, evidence handling, evidence storage, chain of custody, serology testing, and DNA testing. The types of errors and mistakes in this case are the result of individuals not adhering to the accepted standards and practices of criminal investigation and forensic laboratory testing.”  – Dean A. Wideman, certified forensic consultant.

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          “There is, in my opinion, ample reason for a full inquiry into this case, and I hope that the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will agree.” – Daniel L. Hartl, Professor of Biology, Harvard University

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          And Fourth, Wedge interviewed me for about ten minutes specifically asking if I’d go on the record. I agreed. He seemed disappointed that I couldn’t add anything to the Patrick angle of the story. I did state unequivocally that all the evidence taken together shows that LaGuer is innocent. “Everything about this case points in one direction and the DNA points in the other direction” is part of what I said. It would have been nice had Wedge included that opinion as well as the URL for the Website upon which he based his reporting.

        • I feel a little stupid for mentioning this, but when I go to the testimonials page the type is different for Deval Patrick’s quote. When was the quote added?  (Maybe it is just my browser.)

          • is uniform on my browser. I’m not sure what accounts for the difference on your browswer. I didn’t compile the testimonials. A friend of LaGuer’s did and emailed them to me. I uploaded them as is to the Web site. So maybe that person cut and pasted it in. But I really don’t know. In answer to your question, they were all posted at the same time.

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