Turned into a major bash....
"Defense lawyer in trouble after rowdy teen party" by Akilah Johnson | Globe Staff, January 10, 2013
A prominent Massachusetts lawyer could face criminal charges after hosting what police records describe as an alcohol-fueled New Year’s Eve party for her teenage daughter at their Scituate home.
Scituate police accused Tracy A. Miner, 54, who has been deemed one of the best white-collar criminal defense lawyers in the country by her peers, of furnishing alcohol to minors, a violation of the state’s social host law, and of keeping a disorderly house. Miner, her 17-year-old daughter, and seven others ages 17 to 19 were summoned to appear before a clerk magistrate in Hingham District Court to determine if charges should be filed.
I'll bet she has no problem getting out of this one.
The clerk’s office said the hearings would take place within the next two weeks....
Miner is well-known in Boston, where she has represented corporations, financial institutions, and public officials....
Scituate police arrived at Miner’s Gannett Road house on New Year’s just after the ball dropped and 2013 began. Someone had called police, said there was an unconscious male at a party, and then hung up. Arriving officers were met by a stream of up to 30 teenagers running from the house, the police report said. Officers tried to stop the teenagers and ask about the passed-out youth, but were met with mute responses.
Officers pulled into the driveway, got out of their police cars, and started searching the property. The front and side doors were locked, but officers saw partygoers scattering inside the house, some gathering up liquor bottles and cans.
One officer knocked on every possible door and window but said in the report: “My attempts failed.”
But one of his colleagues who was also looking through the windows spotted the unconscious teen in a basement chair “slouched over not moving,” the report said. Firefighters opened the sliding glass door and started treating the boy, who eventually regained consciousness. According to the report, he told paramedics that he had a lot to drink and did not know what was going on.
People gonna be angry at that kid.
Scattered through the first floor and basement were about 50 beer cans, pizza boxes, and two 55-gallon trash cans full of empty beer, wine, and liquor bottles, the report said. The house had the “strong odor of freshly burnt marijuana,” the police report said.
Ooooooooh! Not good.
As firefighters treated the teenager, the report said, Miner, who had been asleep, came downstairs wondering what the emergency crews were doing in her house. According to the police report, Miner told investigators that she was throwing a party for her daughter and her daughter’s friends.
Yeah, you see, there's the law, and then there is the "law."
She had collected the teenagers’ keys with the intention of having them stay the night and did not know someone needed help, the report said. An officer noted in his report that Miner smelled of alcohol, and “she was also unsteady on her feet.”
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Okay, okay, order in the court:
"Scituate lawyer avoids charges from teen party" by Jessica Bartlett | Globe Correspondent, January 17, 2013
HINGHAM — Prominent defense attorney Tracy A. Miner avoided charges Wednesday related to an alleged underage drinking party at her Scituate house on New Year’s Eve.
In a closed court hearing at Hingham District Court, Clerk Magistrate Joseph Ligotti took Miner’s case under advisement. If Miner avoids trouble with police for the next six months, any potential charges the attorney might have faced will be dropped.
When asked about the proceedings on her way out of the courtroom, Miner said: “I trust the justice system. I work in it.”
I would , too, if I was shown such favoritism.
Asked if having a working connection to the legal system helped her avoid trouble, Miner answered no.
Well, self-delusion isn't a crime.
Miner, 54, was summoned to court after hosting a party for her daughter on New Year’s Eve, when underage guests allegedly consumed alcohol. According to a police report, officers went to the Gannett Road house after a phone call reported there was an unconscious male at the party.
The report said that when police arrived, dozens of teenagers fled the home. Firefighters soon found the unconscious male and began treating him, the report said, and Miner came downstairs soon afterward to ask why the emergency crews were in her house.
According to the report, Miner said that she was throwing a party for her daughter and her daughter’s friends and that she had collected all their car keys with the intention that they would stay the night.
Eight teenagers, including Miner’s 17-year-old daughter, were summoned to court. Five of those teenagers appeared alongside Miner Wednesday.
Those youths will have to stay clean for 90 days and take alcohol-awareness classes in order to have any alcohol-possession charges dropped. Their names were not made available, as they have not yet been charged. The remaining three teenagers will appear in court at a later date.
Sergeant Michael O’Hara, Scituate’s police prosecutor, said the town is researching an appeal to the judge’s decision....
O’Hara had no comment when asked how Miner avoided criminal charges.
Miner is a lawyer with the law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo. Gina Addis, the firm’s director of public relations, was not immediately available for comment.
That's how she avoided charges.
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"Close call that shouldn’t be" by Yvonne Abraham | Globe Columnist, January 27, 2013
It had the makings of disasters we’ve seen all too often.
When police arrived at the big house by the marsh in North Scituate after midnight Jan. 1, 20 or 30 teens bolted. Others hid. Inside, police spotted two 55-gallon bins full of empty beer, wine, and liquor bottles. Another 50 empties and 10 pizza boxes were scattered all over. They smelled weed. In the basement, an 18-year-old slumped in a chair, too drunk to move.
Don't kids ever learn?
Then the homeowner appeared, smelling of alcohol and unsteady on her feet, police said. She explained that she had gone up to her room before midnight. She seemed unaware a boy was unconscious in her home.
We have a law for this kind of thing, a statute driven by completely preventable tragedies: the drunk 16-year-old who punched a window before he left a party, then collapsed and bled to death on a freezing stoop; the wasted teen who crashed into a young couple, killing the girl and permanently disabling the boy; the accidents, sexual assaults, and alcohol poisonings that are legion.
Under the social host law, a person who hosts an underage drinking party can face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $2,000. Police thought they had a clear violation here. The mother volunteered that she had taken away the kids’ keys so they couldn’t drive, an apparent acknowledgment that she knew they were drinking, or were likely to.
And this wasn’t just any mother. This was Tracy A. Miner , a well-regarded, well-connected attorney at a big Boston law firm. Ordinarily, the Plymouth County DA would handle this case, but Miner had contributed to his campaigns, so District Attorney Timothy Cruz asked the Bristol County DA to step in.
In Hingham District Court, the case landed before a clerk-magistrate with his own reputation: Joseph Ligotti, a mercurial, politically-wired official twice disciplined for inappropriate conduct and insensitivity. But he seemed to go out of his way to be sensitive to Miner. Despite pleas from police and the assistant district attorney, he refused to issue a complaint. Instead, he left the case open for six months, placing her on a kind of probation.
Almost always, say people who deal with this law, clerk-magistrates will issue complaints if police ask for them, and especially if prosecutors do.
But not Ligotti. If this was his idea of mercy, it was badly misplaced.
At the hearing, Miner said she didn’t know her guests were drinking, according to someone familiar with the proceedings. (Miner did not respond to requests for comment.) She said she went up to her room at 11:30 on New Year’s Eve, leaving her daughter with just a small group of girlfriends, and that dozens of other teens arrived after that. She said she took the keys away not because she knew they were drinking, but so they wouldn’t drive on a dangerous night. The hundreds of empty bottles police found in the house were, she claimed, from other parties.
None of this passes the smell test. But Ligotti gave Miner the benefit of the doubt. Sergeant Michael O’Hara, the Scituate police prosecutor, says the clerk-magistrate has done this before, blocking two other cases he tried to bring under the social host law.
Miner might not have fared as well elsewhere. In Essex County, where DA Jonathan Blodgett has made it a mission to hold parents responsible for underage drinking in their homes, Tiffany Clark was sentenced to six months in prison in 2012, in a similar case.
See: Chaperone's Sentence Makes Me Sick
So does this case.
And in 2010, former Clinton selectman Mark Elworthy was charged after teenagers got drunk at his home and a fight broke out — even though Elworthy said he wasn’t there at the time. A jury later acquitted him.
So what happened here? Is this the case of a person with outsize influence getting a break she wouldn’t get elsewhere? Or is it really true that kids can drink themselves senseless in a house where a parent is present, but completely clueless about what’s going on?
I don’t know which is more troubling.
I do. It is when the case is dismissed after someone has died.
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Time to bury this story (frown), too.
