Just shut that light off, will ya?
"SJC will study rate of OUI acquittals; Says confidence in judiciary paramount More than 80% go free in jury-waived trials" November 01, 2011|By Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff
The state’s highest court has opened a formal inquiry into whether the acquittal rate in drunken driving trials before judges, a rate that now eclipses 80 percent, is unusual and excessive, a step it called necessary to assure the judiciary’s integrity.
The Supreme Judicial Court announced the inquiry yesterday, the day after the Globe Spotlight Team reported that district court judges are acquitting accused drunk drivers at a rate that is about 30 percentage points higher than that of juries, a degree of leniency that specialists have said is virtually unsurpassed in the United States.
The SJC said the confidential review has already begun and is being led by Jack Cinquegrana, a former assistant US attorney and past president of the Boston Bar Association.
“Public confidence in the judiciary depends on its belief in the integrity of the judicial process, judges, and their decisions,’’ the justices said in a prepared statement. “To preserve the public’s trust and confidence, the courts must be, and must appear to be, fair and impartial in all cases.’’
And the fact they they no longer are in AmeriKa has destroyed that very confidence and trust -- if it was ever there at all.
The Spotlight Team reported that in some counties, the rate of not guilty verdicts by judges in drunken driving cases is soaring. Judges in Suffolk County, for example, are acquitting defendants 88 percent of the time in operating-under-the-influence cases. Plymouth County judges are ruling against prosecutors 86 percent of the time....
Maybe the judges are boozers.
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"Spotlight Report
A judicial haven for accused drunk drivers; Plymouth County’s courts may be the most lenient in OUI trials. Judges hear most cases without a jury and acquit just about everyone, leaving police and victims appalled.
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In the real world of drunken driving enforcement, Maddaus should have been - would have been - in a load of trouble.
But this was not the real world. It was Plymouth County. He couldn’t have crashed in a safer spot.
As the Globe Spotlight Team reported last week, when judges in Massachusetts hear drunken driving cases in bench trials, without a jury, they are overwhelmingly inclined to find defendants not guilty. The statewide acquittal rate exceeds 80 percent, a finding that moved the Supreme Judicial Court to announce Monday it had appointed an investigator to review the pattern of verdicts.
If there is an epicenter for that judicial leniency, it is Plymouth County....
John E. Bradley Jr., the deputy first assistant district attorney, said “You have certain judges . . . who just don’t like convicting people of anything.’’
How horrid in the land of the free.
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District Court Chief Justice Lynda M. Connolly told the Spotlight Team in a recent interview that she believes her judges are calling them as they see them, weighing the evidence and rendering verdicts without fear or favor. The state’s 82 percent bench trial acquittal rate in operating under the influence cases, she said, is not evidence that “there’s something wrong here.’’
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Connolly offered a different explanation for why Plymouth prosecutors are complaining about bench trial acquittals. Sour grapes....
It's a loss on the record, and that always seems more important than truth or justice.
But the Spotlight Team’s examination of the cases handled by several judges in Plymouth County - and by especially lenient judges in other sections of the state - shows an almost complete unwillingness to convict, even in cases where the evidence against the defendant is overwhelming.
Consider:
No, I've had enough Boston Globe to drink.
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Let's get something clear. I'm not for drunk drivers all over the road. The fact is I have argued for strict prohibition on this page (more to make a point than its practicality). What to do with them in a cultural that promotes partying due to its economic benefit while sending an abstinence message to kids? I don't know.
