This from the MetroWest Daily News.
The more we learn the more rotton Healey’s attacks seem. Seems like she thought she could get away with a driveby, but the good guys are closing in.
Holmes: Crime, Political stances and second chances
By Rick Holmes/ Columnist
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Whats happening to the governors race is a crime.
Not that the candidates shouldnt be talking about crime. The murder rate is up sharply in Boston and elsewhere. Even in MetroWest there are concerns about property crimes and gang activity.
But why crime is up and what to do about it arent the focus of the political world. At this point, the campaign is all about a rape and a mugging. The rape was committed in 1983 by Benjamin LaGuer on his Leominster neighbor. The mugging is being committed by Republican Kerry Healey on her Democratic opponent.
Beyond the politics of sound-bites and 30-second spots is a choice Massachusetts must make between tough stances and second chances.
Healeys attack on Deval Patrick over the LaGuer case is about tough stances; its about making her look strong and him look compromised. She is just the latest in a long line of Republicans to try to put her opponent in bed with a vicious criminal. But lets try to separate the facts and the policy choices from the symbolism.
LaGuer started claiming he was unfairly tried before he was sentenced. He turned down a plea bargain, he said, because he was innocent. If he had accepted the plea, by the way, hed have been a convicted rapist put back on the streets years ago, and thus unavailable for campaign bumper-stickers. Anyway, LaGuer and his lawyers convinced a lot of people — John Silber, Nobel prize-winner Elie Wiesel, Robert Cordy (Gov. Bill Welds chief legal counsel), and Deval Patrick among them — that irregularities in the case argued for a new trial. All wrote letters on LaGuers behalf.
Patrick never said LaGuer was innocent. He urged a new trial and he argued for parole. Understand that parole is not for people wrongly convicted. Parole is designed to let a convicted criminal out of prison because that person is ready for a supervised return to freedom.
As Healey, who describes herself as a career criminologist, knows, parole is a major component of the prisoner re-entry process. Massachusetts releases 20,000 criminals from prison and county jails every year, and more than half of them are back behind bars within three years. Get her in a small room, and Healey will acknowledge the need to have more convicts released on probation and parole. That way they are supervised as they find employment, housing, help with substance abuse and all the other things they need to live within the law, instead of being dumped right back into the situation that got them in trouble before.
But get her in a campaign and Healey strikes her “tough on crime” pose. Suddenly, parole is terrible. Anyone who writes a letter to a parole board is disqualified from running for governor. That might come as a surprise to her runningmate, Reed Hillman. A retired state trooper, Hillman wrote a letter supporting parole for a man convicted of assaulting a state trooper.
Patrick also stands accused of contributing $5,000 to help pay for a DNA test LaGuer hoped would prove his innocence. The test proved the opposite, and Patrick has withdrawn his support from LaGuer.
Does Healey oppose DNA tests for convicted criminals? Maybe she should meet Eric Sarsfeld, who spent 10 years behind bars for a rape in Marlborough. A DNA test cleared him, and a couple of weeks ago a federal judge ruled his lost years were worth $13 million.
Does showing an interest in whether an innocent man has been wrongfully convicted disqualify a candidate for governor? I hope not.
Healey is following an old script. Bill Weld broke the Democrats hold on the governors office 16 years ago by out-toughing his opponents and promising to “introduce prisoners to the joy of breaking rocks.”
Once in office, Weld pushed for mandatory minimum sentences — no more probation or parole for thousands of people convicted for drugs or other hot-button crimes. He signed a “Truth in Sentencing” bill that stripped judges of discretion and the ability to impose sentences that include time to be served and time to be suspended — and reimposed should a paroled prisoner get in trouble again. Fearful of being tagged “soft on crime,” Democrats put up little resistance.
“Truth in sentencing was a big mistake,” Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley told me this week. With split sentences, the state had leverage over released criminals. You could force them to get counseling and drug treatment. They had to call their probation or parole officer on schedule. If they messed up, they could be thrown back into prison to serve out the rest of their sentence without going through a new trial.
Thats how to make second chances work, Coakley said. Teach inmates life skills while they are in prison. Breaking rocks doesnt prepare anyone to go straight after their release. Give them drug treatment. Dont just cut them loose without supervision. Split sentences and supervised re-entry “cost less and make more sense than mandatory minimums,” she said.
Coakley knows more about real crime than Healey and Patrick put together. Healey learned about crime at Harvard and polished her credentials at a Cambridge think tank. Patrick was never a street lawyer. He worked on appeals for the NAACP and did pro bono representation while a partner at a top Boston law firm. He was an assistant secretary in the Clinton Justice Department, not a front-line prosecutor.
Coakley has spent 20 years putting murderers, rapists and child molesters in jail. No one is going to call her soft on crime and get away with it. She is as smart and articulate as she is tough. She is also the prohibitive favorite to be the states next attorney general.
She is such a strong candidate that no Democrat stepped forth to challenge her when AG Tom Reilly announced he wouldnt be seeking re-election. Its almost unheard-of for a Democrat to step into nomination for statewide office without a primary fight.
Coakleys Republican opponent, Cambridge lawyer Larry Frisoli, is running hard, but he cant touch her in terms of statewide organization, name recognition and fund-raising. It also doesnt hurt that Coakley has been top prosecutor in the states most populous county. If elected, she will follow the path of her predecessors, Scott Harshbarger and Reilly, both of whom went from Middlesex County DA to state attorney general.
Campaigns are more about symbols than solutions, and polls show Healeys spotlight on the criminals Patrick has allegedly supported are cutting into his early lead. Healey hasnt bothered to explain how parole for Benjamin LaGuer would affect crime one way or another. Meanwhile, Patricks proposal to hire 1,000 new cops is apparently too practical to provide any political traction.
The Willie Horton commercials, so similar to Healeys attack ads, sank Mike Dukakis in 1988. John Kerry was successfully “swiftboated” in 2004. Will Patrick suffer the same fate at the hands of his opponents 30-second hits? I dont know. Dukakis and Kerry lost in places like Ohio and Texas, but both carried Massachusetts handily.
I do know that, once again, posturing is squeezing policy out of the political debate. And thats a crime.
Rick Holmes column appears on Sundays. He can be reached at rholmes@cnc.com.
