Boundless Ambition
By Mitch Berg
We in Minnesota have a perspective on Martha Coakley that most states don’t.
It’s been 25-odd years since an overzealous prosecutor in Jordan, MN tripped into a controversy over a pre-school, and pretty much invented the genre of the “entirely fantasy-based sex abuse case”; the conventional wisdom of the day was that children never, ever made up stories about abuse – so pre-schoolers, under questioning, pretty much let their little fantasy lives run amok, destroying not a few lives in the process and serving as the first of a wave of “satanic child abuse” cases that wracked the nation during the early eighties.
Including a similar, and at face value vastly more sickening, case in Massachusetts, involving a daycare run by the Amirault family. Building on the same wave of suggested memories and childish fantasy that we saw in the Scott County case, the State of Massachusetts sent several of the Amiraults to jail – until it became clear that the procedures used to convict them were fatally flawed. And so most of them were released.
Except for one of them:
In July 2001, the notoriously tough Massachusetts parole board voted unanimously to grant Gerald Amirault clemency. Although the parole board is not permitted to consider guilt or innocence, its recommendation said: “(I)t is clearly a matter of public knowledge that, at the minimum, real and substantial doubt exists concerning petitioner’s conviction.”
Immediately after the board’s recommendation, The Boston Globe reported that Gov. Jane Swift was leaning toward accepting the board’s recommendation and freeing Amirault.
So far, so good.
Enter Martha Coakley, Middlesex district attorney. Gerald Amirault had already spent 15 years in prison for crimes he no more committed than anyone reading this column did. But Coakley put on a full court press to keep Amirault in prison simply to further her political ambitions.
By then, every sentient person knew that Amirault was innocent. But instead of saying nothing, Coakley frantically lobbied Gov. Jane Swift to keep him in prison to show that she was a take-no-prisoners prosecutor, who stood up for “the children.” As a result of Coakley’s efforts — and her contagious ambition — Gov. Swift denied Amirault’s clemency.
Thanks to Martha Coakley, Gerald Amirault sat in prison for another three years.
There are few things in this world lower than fraudulently destroying another person’s life for your own gain.
Martha Coakley deserves defeat because she’s a tone-deaf political patrician who’s run the worst campaign in recent memory, anywhere.
She deserves ignominy and pointed scrutiny for what she did in the Amirault case. An emphatic retiredment from public life seems a small price to pay.
For her, anyway.
January 19th, 2010 at 10:04 am
There is no difference–none–between this behavior and that of the 17th Century witch hunters, except that the torture portion of the process was delayed until after incarceration. Vile, and especially vile because it was done under cover of (a certain kind of) piety and concern for children. I believe in Hell, and there’s a special place there for witch prosecutors.
January 19th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Can we assume Flush/peevee/deegee want Coakley to win?
January 19th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
For more on this vile broad read this from our friends at Powerline:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/01/025405.php
January 24th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Amirault was found guilty and this verdict was upheld several times by both political parties. There were physical findings of abuse in the children and the children showed signs of strong sexualized behaviors after the abuse. The children as adults continue to state they were abused.
Information on the Amirault case:
http://eassurvey.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/fells-acres-%E2%80%93-amirault-case/
Letters to the Editor: The Real Darkness Is Child Abuse WALL STREET JOURNAL (J) 02/24/95 Hardoon The three Amiraults — Gerald, Violet and Cheryl – were convicted after two trials before different judges and juries almost one year apart. They were represented by able and well-known defense counsel. The convictions were upheld after review by state and federal appellate courts….in Amirault, the majority of the female children who testified had some relevant physical findings, as did several female children involved in the investigation who did not participate in the trial. The findings included labial adhesions and hymenal scarring….The victims and their families in these cases have been irrevocably harmed by what was done to them by the Amiraults….The juries, by their verdicts, rejected these arguments. Justice was done.