Parallel Foreclosure Victims and the remedy owed to a million homeowners or
more.
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Only 86 google listings exist when one types the phrase in quotes "Parallel
Foreclosure", yet perhaps a million homeowners were victimized by this
hideous ...
4 months ago
7 comments:
From Riverdaughter's blog.
Valhalla, on January 15th, 2010 at 12:20 pm Said:
as Coakley says, it’s not uncommon to have to bring a case before more than one grand jury to get an indictment. The part of the article you did not mention is that it was Coakley’s office which did secure a grand jury indictment in this very case, which enabled her successor to even take the case to trial.
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Valhalla's complete post:
I’ve seen this floating around too. This is a horribly skewed article.
The first problem is that prosecutor’s don’t control grand jury verdicts, as this implies. (if they could, they wouldn’t need to bother with grand juries in the first place).
Second, cherry-picking among thousands of cases in which Coakley’s office did successfully prosecute and punish criminals, including sex offenders, is highly problematic. If you’re going to go digging only for reasons to oppose Coakley, please come up with actual data that Coakley was soft on sex offenders as a trend. The plural of anecdote is not data.
Third, most people do not understand bail hearings. They think it’s like Law and Order, with all sorts of moralistic speechifying. It’s not. A bail hearing is to establish the conditions under which the defendant must be put to make sure he/she shows up for trial. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GUILT OR INNOCENCE. The severity of the crime charged (and it’s worth remembering we have that little old innocent-until-proven-guilty thingie in our courts) is only a factor as far as it speaks to whether the defendant will show up to trial.
Fourth, as Coakley says, it’s not uncommon to have to bring a case before more than one grand jury to get an indictment. The part of the article you did not mention is that it was Coakley’s office which did secure a grand jury indictment in this very case, which enabled her successor to even take the case to trial.
This article is trying to twist a single case into some gigantic personal and professional horror to hold against Coakley. I find it pretty telling that out of thousands of sex abuse cases prosecuted by Coakley’s office over the years, they could only come up with one example to show she’s what… soft on crime? Please.
More info from Valhalla is at
http://www.correntewire.com/more_good_judgment_coakley#comment-155193
Here's the best summary I've seen yet of this and another crazy story:
They’re covering all the bases. First, Martha was too harsh and wouldn’t release a convicted child rapist. Then, she was too lax and let an alleged child rapist have bail until his trial. Damn the Constitution and “innocent until proven guilty,” see. It’s free the convicted rapist and lock up the suspect! Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and said so!
More info:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/01/06/some_saw_coakley_as_lax_on_05_rape_case/?page=1
A poster commented elsewhere:
I noticed someone mention the “Winfield child rapist.” This is what I found, which reads like a smear job but includes some bits to appear objective. People who don’t understand the criminal justice system or how difficult it is to respond to sex crimes against very young victims will likely draw negative conclusions about Coakley, but that would be unfair. A few male lawyers are quoted with comments with negative connotations, but those men know what I know (probably better than I know it) – getting an indictment without a victim’s testimony is extremely difficult, and having the family make a complaint on behalf of the victim is likely what allowed the indictment to be made and cash bond is not going to be required by a judge when the accused is a cop with no history of violence or criminal acts or discipline. Mention is made of some discipline the cop lied about – well, we don’t know when the truth was discovered, but I bet it was after the chance to demand bond passed by Coakley’s office.
A poster at Pumapac says:
Coakley has been destroyed in the press over the last three weeks. Article after article, hit after hit, all focused on child rapist and her alleged failures. I could not find any article criticizing her or the grand jury process concerning the child rapist until December 2009. Interesting, huh?
http://www.wickedlocal.com/melrose/news/x805327691
Interestingly, in December 2007, the report on the two life sentences for Winfield breathes not a whisper of criticism of the DA’s office for failing to secure an indictment sooner. The allegations of abuse arose a month after the incident, and the police department suspended Winfield with pay.
This is a good blog. Keep up all the work. I too love blogging and expressing my opinions
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