How to improve Healeys favorable numbers…
Kerry its pretty clear that staying away from the Laguer issue during the debate was very effective. So, in my humble opinion you should focus on cleaning up this whole Bechtel mess. Someone needs to be held accountable! Someone needs to be fired! Holding people accountable for their positions shows strong leadership qualities and that is sure to improve your favorability.
So I have a suggestion for the person I think you should fire. Her name is Judith Goldberg. Yes, I know Judith Goldberg is a lawyer working in your administration and has nothing to do with the Big Dig. Why should she be fired? Well she was Ben Laguers lawyer!
Please share widely!
I commented on that earlier today but not as eloquently as you. Did you also know that today is the filing deadline for the Commonwealth to respond to Rehnquist’s brief to the SJC?
Sorry, I read your post but missed your comment.
is that Ben really admired Goldberg as a lawyer and appreciated her courage and tenacity in how she handled the case. At the time, she was working for William Weld’s old law firm. She came on the case after LaGuer lost at the Parole Board in 1998 (15 years after his arrest). She was part of the team that sued the parole board in order to get a second hearing. She won on an argument based on the fact that one of Parole Board members had made a racist comment on an unrelated matter and was thereby forced off the board. As I understand it, the firm asked Weld about the propriety of his firm suing a board full of people he appointed, and he gave them the go ahead. They won the right to get a second hearing which was held in 2000, but the board ruled against LaGuer again. Many people submitted letters in support of LaGuer because the injustice of the situation was so obvious. So Goldberg would have been one of the attorneys handling those letters, including the one from Patrick. Getting back to her skills as a lawyer, LaGuer feels that had she not left the firm to go into the public sector and thereby stayed with the case the DNA testing would not have ended up being the mess that it was. Bottom line, she was a good lawyer doing good work.
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Don’t forget, the case is ongoing and LaGuer still has good lawyers doing good work.
Speaking out wrote:
Which explains why the Healey people knew much more detail about Deval’s involvement than Deval could remember himself.
Another BMGer picks up on the story here and it becomes fodder for the Hillman/Murray debate here. Notice that Hillman writes this off as a lawyer just doing her job as opposed to a criminal-coddling influential former government official going out of his way to send a letter. Hillman neglects to mention that Judith Goldberg was working pro bono. That is to say she was racking up billable hours for which her firm knew it wouldn’t receive a dime. I would say she was in slightly deeper than Patrick. Heck, torso and shoulders deeper.
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(cross posted here)