Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL?

By

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL?

Kerry Healy’s latest ad denounces Patrick for “doing his job” by defending Carl Ray Songer, “an admitted cop killer”.  She has accused Patrick of being “soft on crime”, and she suggests that criminal defense attorneys can not be good governors. 

Deval Patrick, as a criminal defense attorney for the  NAACP, represented people accused of crimes.  That means that his job was to ensure that they received a fair trial.  And that means that he was upholding the tenets of the U.S. Constitution. 

  So, in upholding the Constitution, Patrick appealed Carl Ray Songer’s death sentence, arguing that it was unconstitutionally imposed.  And apparently he was right, because the court agreed.  So his sentence was reduced to life in prison. 

  It has also been suggested that Patrick was wrong to have contributed money for the DNA test of a convicted rapist whose conviction was in question.  The DNA supported his conviction, so how is that contribution interpreted as a mistake?  Is it wrong to make sure that justice is done justly?  Can we forget the 170 mistakenly convicted men and women who have recently been exonerated through the work of the Innocents Project  and DNA testing?  If their cries of innocence had been ignored, would that have protected the victims? 

The Constitution guarantees us certain unalienable rights.  That is what separates Americans from those less fortunate.  And that is what we are supposedly fighting to protect every day.  So when did this change?  When did upholding our rights under the Constitution become a demerit on a resume?

Some would argue that it is UnAmerican to suggest that an attorney should never defend a criminal defendant.  And some would argue that to deny accused murderers their Constitutional rights is to suggest that the end justifies the means.  Who gets to decide what end justifies what means? 

Deval Patrick had the conviction and the courage to protect and defend the Constitution.  Anything less would be UnAmerican. 

Marsha V. Kazarosian, Esq.

President of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys 

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. “Troops is filmed on location with the men of the Imperial forces. All suspects are guilty. Period. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be suspects, would they?”
    – Troops, fan film 1997

    <

    p>
    Sometimes it feels like we are living in a low budget fan film. /sigh

Archives