I'm Rocker, but I've got a voice like Ozzy Osbourne....
"Prosecutorial code propels GOP’s Michael Sullivan far" by Eric Moskowitz | Globe Staff, April 24, 2013
There was no question that the 29-year-old Guatemalan woman who arrived at Logan Airport in 2003 with three pounds of heroin sewn into her purse and another half-pound hidden inside her body had broken the law. The question was what to do about it.
To her court-appointed lawyer, Flor Jurado-Lopez was a victim who should be sent home, not a criminal to be locked away. She was forced to borrow money from a gang to pay hospital bills for her husband — a shooting victim of the violence roiling Guatemala — and coerced into becoming a drug mule, ordered to stuff 23 balloons of heroin into her body. Pregnant with her first child, she gave birth in handcuffs while awaiting sentencing.
To the office of US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, now running for US Senate, Jurado-Lopez was a law-breaker who should be dealt with one way, the automatic federal sentencing formula that chiefly considered the weight of the drugs and called for six years in prison.
That was Sullivan’s style: by the book, hard on crime, no negotiations. The approach made him a favorite with the Bush White House, which elevated Sullivan in 2006 to serve two high-profile jobs at once — acting director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in Washington while still managing the federal prosecutor’s office in Massachusetts, mostly from afar.
His prominent double duty, coupled with an understated, regular-guy demeanor, prompted some Republican activists to dream for years about a Sullivan campaign for statewide office, and to draft him for the Senate special election. That experience has given him a name-recognition advantage in the three-way GOP primary. Following last week’s Marathon bombings, he was a fixture on cable news speaking as a former ATF director.
Just playing his role -- literally.
But his Senate candidacy has also directed more attention to his years as US attorney, a time defined in public view by headline-grabbing prosecutions of criminals such as the attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid and the carjacker-killer Gary Lee Sampson.
If those were seen as unanimous successes, it was the scores of smaller cases such as that of the Guatemalan drug mule that made Sullivan a polarizing figure to federal judges, defense lawyers, and even his own prosecutors.
Liberal and libertarian jurists blanched at what they saw as indiscriminate use of the office’s powers to seek thousands of years of collective sentences — at a cost far into the millions of dollars — to lock up a slew of addicts and lower-level drug dealers instead of using federal powers to pursue more sophisticated probes. Defense lawyers branded him “Maximum Mike.”
You been hanging around Israelis, Mike?
Sullivan winces at that moniker. He says his prosecutorial style reflects his political philosophy — an unwavering commitment to a code of right and wrong, meant to protect the public....
Uh-huh.
Related: Senate Election Special: Sullivan Thinks He's Special
He was ju$t looking after your $ecurity.
The rest is what a great guy he is.
--more--"
And he's looking like the nominee. I don't like any of them, Democrap or Repuglican.
Also see: Special Election For Senate Stinks
