CARR, McGOVERN
MARTY: ‘I’m just happy it’s behind us’
City Hall just got some good news out of federal court — prosecutors, who keep trying to stick their hands in local union matters and politics, have been rebuffed again.
Four Teamsters were cleared of any wrongdoing in the “Top Chef ” extortion trial, signaling that jurors weren’t buying the notion that their words or actions violated federal law. The verdict must have felt like a gut punch to a U.S. attorney’s office that just last year saw its convictions stemming from the Probation Department scandal overturned.
At City Hall, there was likely some quiet rejoicing. While mayoral aides Kenneth Brissette and Timothy Sullivan still face extortion and conspiracy charges in the separate union-related Boston Calling trial set for January, yesterday’s Teamster verdict definitely sent a message.
“It shows that the government needs to reexamine the prosecutions it is bringing and whether these state actions are actually crimes,” said civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate. “I think they should re-examine whether the upcoming City Hall trial should continue.”
The overreach by the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston is not new. Former U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz tried to make a federal crime out of a rigged — albeit business-asusual — hiring scheme in the state’s Probation Department. A jury handed down a few wrist slaps, and a federal appeals court eventually found even those sentences could not stand, ruling that Ortiz’s office “overstepped its bounds.”
Yesterday, 12 jurors heard and rejected another controversial federal case — and those Teamster verdicts offer a potential litmus test for the City Hall Boston Calling trial.
“I think this acquittal may well give the judge in the City Hall case a little bit more courage about getting rid of an indictment that can’t possibly result in a conviction,” said Michael Anderson, an appellate litigator who has followed both cases.
The problem with these cases stems from the fact that there are other ways to resolve them. In the Teamster case, if there was evidence that tires were slashed or there was a physical altercation during the picketing outside the Milton restaurant where the “Top Chef” crew was shooting, the Norfolk prosecutor could have brought charges.
If Brissette and Sullivan were indeed involved in withholding permits from the Boston Calling music festival, organizers could have run to court for a temporary restraining order to prevent the alleged actions from ruining the event.
In both instances, federal indictments were overkill.
“These are state matters that can be charged under Massachusetts law,” Anderson said. “I think it’s going to take one more loss in one of these cases to finally derail prosecutors.”
Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb has been shutting down gangs, indicting drug traffickers and touting the numerous illegal immigrants his office has indicted for unlawful re-entry into the country.
That is what federal prosecutors do — they bring charges against those who commit federal crimes.
Anything else runs afoul of the late Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black’s age-old maxim: “Bad men, like good men, are entitled to be tried and sentenced in accordance with law.”