Jennifer Martel’s parents remember their slain daughter
See: Remy's Stormy Romance
"Review sheds more light on Jared Remy case' Prosecutor says he didn’t know about earlier case" by Maria Cramer | Globe staff August 23, 2014
The prosecutor who did not contest Jared Remy’s release after he was arrested on domestic violence charges last year has told investigators he might have asked that Remy be held in jail if he had known that Remy had been deemed too dangerous to be freed in a prior domestic violence case.
The disclosure, included in part of a review of the case that District Attorney Marian Ryan had kept from the public until this week, offers new insights into the considerations by the prosecutor who made the decision to not object to Remy’s release.
Remy killed his girlfriend, Jennifer Martel, a day after the court released him without bail on the domestic violence charge. In 2005, Remy had been ordered held because he was considered dangerous after an assault on a different girlfriend, whom Remy kicked and punched repeatedly.
“It would have been significant to know that Remy had previously been held on dangerousness,” the prosecutor told former Essex district attorney Kevin Burke and First Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Jeanmarie Carroll in their review of the Remy case.
Ryan explained Friday that the prosecutor did not know that Remy had been ordered held in 2005 because such information was historically kept out of a defendant’s probation record....
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"DA withheld 19 pages of Jared Remy report, may have violated law; Middlesex DA excluded employee statements" by Maria Cramer | Globe staff August 22, 2014
In May, Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan released a 16-page report that she said detailed results of an independent review of how her office handled the case against Jared W. Remy, who had been arrested on charges of assaulting his girlfriend two days before he killed her.
“I said I would release the findings after the case had concluded,” she said in a statement published on her website May 27, the same day Remy pleaded guilty to the murder of Jennifer Martel.
But the report was not complete. In a possible violation of the state’s public records laws, Ryan’s office withheld 19 pages, which included summaries of interviews with prosecutors and victim advocates about the Aug. 14, 2013, arraignment of Remy following his arrest for smashing Martel’s head into a bathroom mirror.
Ryan’s office also withheld the report’s table of contents, making it impossible for the public to know that portions of the review were excluded. Late Thursday afternoon, Ryan’s office released the missing pages to the Globe following a public records request for the document.
Ryan said that when she released the findings in May, she was under no obligation to provide the employee statements and other information that was excluded.
“When I elect to release something that I haven’t been compelled to release, it’s fully in my discretion to release what I’m going to release,” Ryan said in a telephone interview Thursday night.
She said she withheld the summary of interviews with employees, who are identified in the report only by title, because she had told them to speak openly to the lawyers conducting the review.
“I asked members of my staff to speak freely, to speak candidly, to have no fears of any repercussions about anything they said,” she said, adding that she did not want to violate their trust.
The state’s open records law makes it clear that a government agency that withholds parts of a requested public document must state what was withheld and why, said Robert Bertsche, chair of the media law group at Prince Lobel Tye in Boston.
That transparency is crucial so that the public has the opportunity to challenge an agency’s decision to withhold information, he said.
“The public records law is not supposed to be a game of cat and mouse,” Bertsche said. “When [public agencies] withhold a document and don’t tell you, that’s really a failure of the system, and that’s when we stop trusting government.”
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The Globe requested the complete report after receiving a tip that pages were missing. The report features lengthy summaries of interviews with eight employees, including the victim witness advocate assigned to the case, the assistant district attorney who handled the arraignment, and his district court supervisor. All three said they believed they had taken all the necessary steps to make a sound decision about whether to recommend high bail for Remy or to ask for a dangerousness hearing, which could have allowed the court to hold Remy for up to 90 days.
“The district court supervisor told the ADA she understood how he made that decision based on what was known and that she might have done the same,” according to the full report released Thursday.
Ryan said she did not believe the original request from the News Tribune compelled her to release the entire document.
“I had consulted with our Appeals Bureau and their opinion is that a [records] request does not resurrect when the open case is disposed and closed,” Ryan said. “I didn’t release this report because of [a media request]. I purposely released it voluntarily.”
But by not revealing what was withheld from the full report, she could be seen as misleading the public, Bertsche said. “Put the law aside, it sounds like a lack of candor on the part of a public official to say the least.”
In the Remy case, where public outcry was so strong that some called for Ryan’s resignation, it was especially important to be forthright about what might have gone wrong, said Harvey Silverglate, a civil rights attorney.
“This was a case in which we were entitled to know whether or not a catastrophe could have been averted,” he said. “Maybe it couldn’t have been, but we’re entitled to know that.”
Lisa McGovern, a former Middlesex assistant district attorney who prosecuted Remy for murder, said that Ryan called her and other prosecutors into a meeting May 23, four days before Remy was expected to plead guilty. Ryan planned to release the report May 27, coinciding with Remy’s expected plea.
McGovern said Ryan was worried people would read the employee statements and ask why she had not fired the employees involved in Remy’s assault case.
McGovern resigned soon after Remy’s conviction because she said she could no longer work for Ryan. She is now supporting Michael Sullivan, Ryan’s opponent in the Sept. 9 Democratic primary.
AH!
Think of it as a love note with style.
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Related: Middlesex DA's Office
Also see: In Middlesex DA bid, Michael Sullivan relies on family
"Middlesex DA Ryan criticizes opponent’s side businesses" by Maria Cramer | Globe staff August 22, 2014
Michael Sullivan, the Middlesex clerk of courts, received between $75,000 and $130,000 from 2007 to 2009 for consulting work he performed for the developer of a large project in Cambridge and the Globe reported Thursday that Sullivan had earned more than $1.6 million between 2009 and 2013 from the consulting work, from referral fees from a personal injury case he directed to a friend’s law firm, and from a family snowplow business.
Sullivan, 54, told the Globe he was not a lobbyist for the consulting firm, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a developer that built a series of office and apartment buildings around Kendall Square.
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Michael Goldman, Sullivan’s campaign consultant, dismissed Ryan’s criticisms, saying Ryan has scant knowledge of the private sector. Goldman said that while the referral fee is high, it is not unusual for lawyers to receive such an amount.
“This hysterical and legally unsound diatribe from the embattled Middlesex DA proves that Marian Ryan doesn’t have the legal temperament to be DA,” Goldman said. “Nothing in Clerk Sullivan’s private consulting work could or would ever have involved his separate role as clerk of courts.”
Shouldn't he be apologizing for the sexism?
Sullivan said the work he did for the consulting firm was after business hours as clerk.
Goldman compared the consulting work to Ryan’s job as an instructor at Lasell College, where she has earned $10,000 to $20,000 a year from 2010 to 2013, according to state financial statements she has filed.
“Just as DA Ryan’s teaching over the years hasn’t interfered with her full-time job . . . neither has Michael’s work outside the court interfered with his work as clerk,” Goldman said.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE: Two very different primaries
