LyfLines: Another reason to "just say no" to Martha Coakley

So, we're less than two weeks out from the special election to fill the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy. The Democrats, in the primary, have selected state Attorney General Martha Coakley as their candidate.

For anyone at all familiar with Coakley, and with my views, obviously I would never vote for her. I'm not going to bother listing all of the potential issues - that would be boring, repetitive and a waste of time. Suffice it to say that she's a bland doctrinaire liberal, taking the standard liberal positions on everything. She's a tool of labor, a tool of the abortion lobby, never saw a tax hike she wouldn't support or a tax cut she would - we all know the drill.

And, of primary concern to a lot of people around the country, she'll be the 60th vote for the Health Care Reform package, in whatever monstrous form it takes. Scott Brown, the Republican, has gathered a lot of support, both emotional and financial, from people who see him as the last best chance to stop the government takeover of the health care system.

So there are a lot of reasons to support Brown and work for Coakley's defeat. But Coakley has another something "special" which separates her from the normal, average standard doctrinaire liberal. I've written about it before, but I want to offer this reminder on why Martha Coakley is unfit for public service.

In her position as district attorney of Middlesex county, she fought (successfully) to keep an at-the-time-obviously-innocent man behind bars for a crime that he didn't commit, indeed, a crime that never took place. As part of a wave of panics that swept the nation in the mid-80s, three members of the Amirault family of Malden, MA, owners and operators of the Fells Acre Day Care Center, were convicted of multiple counts of gross sexual abuse. They were convicted on the coerced, solicited and unsupported testimony of a group of young children, testimony which ranged from unlikely to unbelievable to physically impossible, testimony for which there was not a hint of substantiating evidence.

And Martha Coakley, who wants a promotion to the US Senate, fought to keep the last of them in jail long after it had become obvious that the prosection was a travesty.

Boston Globe, 7/7/01¹

The Massachusetts Parole Board has unanimously recommended that Gerald "Tooky" Amirault's sentence be commuted to the nearly 15 years he has spent imprisoned...The decision, signed Tuesday and released yesterday, was assailed by the office of Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley, which vehemently objected to any commutation of Amirault's sentence during his parole hearing in September.

Boston Globe, 2/23/02²

Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley, who inherited the case from former district attorneys Scott Harshbarger and Thomas F. Reilly, said Amirault's insistence that he is innocent does not make it true...Coakley said it was time for Amirault and his supporters to end their pursuit of an early release from prison so that the victims can finally begin to fully heal from the trauma he caused them as children.

For those who may not be aware of the level of miscarriage of justice, a great starting point is Dorothy Rabinowitz' "Darkness in Massachusetts" columns from the Wall Street Journal.

As far as I know, there's not a single word that's been discredited. And keep in mind, these were published 10 years after the fact and six years before the parole board recommended commutation, and Martha Coakley fought against it.

So for those of you out there who might be on the fence about this one, who agree with Brown on some things and agree with Coakley on others, take the time to stop and consider what her behavior in the Amirault case says about Martha Coakley.

¹ - Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff. (2001, July 7). STATE PANEL VOTES TO FREE AMIRAULT PAROLE BOARD RULES ISSUE IS ONE OF `FAIRNESS' :[THIRD Edition]. Boston Globe,p. A.1. Retrieved January 7, 2010, from Business Dateline. (Document ID: 75131479).

² - John Ellement, Globe Staff. (2002, February 23). WITNESS PRAISES AMIRAULT DECISION :[THIRD Edition]. Boston Globe,p. B.3. Retrieved January 7, 2010, from Business Dateline. (Document ID: 109750195).

Labels: Amirault, Martha Coakley, Scott Brown, senator