By
Anne Stevenson, Communities Digital News
BOSTON, May 29, 2014 — This month, dozens of high level Massachusetts politicians enjoyed
immunity in exchange for their testimony in the corruption, bribery, and racketeering trials of various legislators and
family court probation
officers. Several of their co-conspirators have already been convicted
and jailed for running an organized through their State offices.
The fall out from the court corruption scandals has left
Massachusetts leaders saddled with important unanswered questions about
the human toll organized crime may have taken on the Commonwealth’s most
vulnerable families.
Are the Probation Department’s ineffective “offender rehabilitation”
programs paid for with the blood of Massachusetts taxpayers? How can
Massachusetts do a better job of empowering competent, honest workers?
In order to answer these questions, we need to have a real conversation about
Jennifer Martel’s murder, and why these same corrupt courtroom cronies repeatedly failed to save her life.
Most men voluntarily engage in safe, loving relationships with their
families. But Martel’s murderer was not most men, he was a repeat
violent offender and the son of a well connected Red Sox sportscaster.
READ ALSO: Former prosecutor questions integrity of court’s federal funding used to punish crime victims, reward violent offenders
“There is a revolving door at the courthouse, and it is preceded by a
red carpet walkway for people of influence” says former prosecutor
Wendy Murphy, who for decades has worked on criminal cases in the same
Massachusetts courts that
repeatedly let Jared Remy off the hook and rewarded him for committing violent crimes.
 |
| Prosecutor
Wendy Murphy |
Remy’s final arrest last summer may have initiated the only peaceful
time some of his victims may have ever known. His sentencing this week
to a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole for
Martell’s murder marked perhaps the first time in history that the
Massachusetts court system has created a meaningful plan to protect the
public from one of the system’s best customers.
At the time of Martel’s murder, Remy’s record was virtually clean. By
September 2011, Remy’s privately bankrolled defense attorney Peter
Bella had convinced Massachusetts judges to close a staggering
18 cases charging
Remy with dozens of traffic, violence and/or drug related related
offenses. Only twice in 20-years did the courts find Remy guilty, and
on ten occasions, the courts outright dismissed the charges against him.
Remy was also granted six continuances without findings (CWOF’s) that
resulted in dismissals.
According to
Bella, there
was no “pay to play” scandal involved with Remy’s case because his
client never received any special treatment from the courts. In other
words, the Remy case was just some deadly business as usual in the
Massachusetts courts.
Instead of providing Remy’s crime victims with safety and recovery
support, the courts provided the offender himself with therapy and
protection. The sole beneficiaries of the State programs Remy was
enrolled in appear to be the vendors who provided him with services.
According to former prosecutor Murphy, the system is not broken, it’s running exactly the way it’s creators intended.
“If there’s a sign of hope that arises from Martel’s vicious murder,”
says Murphy, “let it be that the public takes a closer look at the
gushing flow of money from DC that literally rewards violent male
offenders with cash, therapy and training programs AFTER they get in
trouble with the courts for assaulting the crime victims who live with
them.”
TO END SYSTEMIC GREED AND CORRUPTION, FEED THE BEAST WITH TAX DOLLARS?
Two days before Martel was murdered, Remy was
arrested
for assaulting Martel, causing Martel to take out a restraining order
against Remy. Once again, the Middlesex DA’s office and the Probation
Department ignored Remy’s criminal history and immediately released him
on $40 bail. According to the
arrest report,
on August 15, 2013, Remy stabbed Martel to death in front of their
4-year-old daughter while fighting off onlookers, bringing an abrupt end
to the 20-years long State sponsored violent crime spree which had gone
practically undetected.
READ ALSO: Convicted murderer’s family used cash, influence to buy leniency, custody of victims
In the days following Martell’s murder,
an audit
of the Middlesex DA’s response to the Remy case and determined that no
comprehensive overhaul of the office was needed. By the time the new
year arrived, two more children, a mother, and an elderly woman would be
slaughtered in Middlesex County by the male offenders they lived with.
To say the justice system should have foreseen such Martel’s tragic
demise is to is to assume wrongly that the officials who presided over
Remy’s cases did not know what the financial forecast was. Bloody with a
touch of cash.
The 2010 arrests of several Probation Department leaders and
legislators operating an organized crime ring from their State offices
should have caused the courts to audit every court vendor and every case
the corrupt court officials had been involved with. But that’s not what
happened.
 |
| Massachusetts Governor
Deval Patrick |
Just three months before Martel’s murder, Massachusetts Governor
Deval Patrick announced that both the State’s Probation Department and
the Department of Children and Families (DCF) would be getting a fresh
start. Then DCF Commissioner Ed Dolan was appointed as
Chief of Probation,
and Olga Roche became the Commissioner of the State’s child protection
agency. Neither agency offered effective help to Martel or her child in
the days leading up to her death when she approached the courts for
help.
Both agencies are now embroiled in corruption scandals.
Last month, Roche
resigned from her post with DCF under pressure from legislators who expressed concern over various DCF funding
misappropriation scandals involving several now dead children under the agency’s supervision, as well as their treatment of
Justina Pelletier, a sick Connecticut child who continues to languish in the Massachusetts foster care system.
Today Massachusetts released
a report advocating for more funding, staff, training for the State’s troubled offender-friendly child welfare agency.
Walk into any given courtroom and what you will likely find is over a
century’s worth of education and training that has already been
obtained by the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney. To say that the
highly trained professionals who were appointed onto Remy’s cases over
the years were too vapid to recognize the haven of corruption they
worked in for years, or that they lacked the qualifications to properly
identify a troubled violent career criminal like Remy would be an insult
if levied against any idiot off the street with even half their
experience.
Massachusetts employs some of the smartest and most qualified judges
and agency leaders I have ever had the privilege of crossing paths with.
This is because the greater Boston region is home to the best
universities in the world known for training some of the greatest legal
scholars and activists the mankind has ever known. It is often from the
region’s talented pool of scholars that the Massachusetts courts cherry
pick the job applicants who go on to become the State’s future leaders.
The vast majority of professionals working in the Massachusetts
courts are probably honest, hardworking, and really care about the
troubled families on their caseloads. But in a corrupt system, cash is
king, honest workers don’t always get a seat at the table, and the
crooks get paid to ignore your arguments.
Feeding the beast is not the answer. Perhaps it’s time for someone
other than the usual suspects to perform an audit on the way these
agencies do business to ensure that oversight, transparency, and
accountability will follow.
Janice Lesko (left) and Gregory Pawloski, Jr. (right). (Facebook photos)
