DiMasi has been punished enough for his crime

After he was found guilty of pocketing $65,000 in bribes, fallen House Speaker Sal DiMasi followed the well-worn path taken by countless public figures.

He had a legion of friends and constituents from the North End flood the court with letters venerating the kid who rose from a cold water flat to become one of the most powerful pols in the state.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf read every single letter. And on that September day five years ago, Wolf told DiMasi he believed every letter was sincere. And indeed, it was the betrayal of that sincerity that Wolf found even more appalling.

“Mr. DiMasi sold all those people out,” Wolf said at the sentencing hearing. “He left the causes he once advocated for.

“People don’t seem to feel betrayed,” the judge added, “and I wonder if they should.”

At that moment, it was all about the shock of how far Sal DiMasi had fallen. The biggest power broker on Beacon Hill seemed poised to become the biggest lobbyist on the Hill. But the trial revealed that Sal had been a little too eager to grab at a brass ring that was supposed to put him on life’s glide path.

I have long been an admirer of Judge Mark Wolf. The role he played in unmasking the rancid marriage between the FBI and the likes of James “Whitey” Bulger and Stevie Flemmi was nothing short of groundbreaking.

And when he passed sentence on Sal DiMasi five years ago, Wolf made it clear that in his view there were no more loathsome scoundrels than “people who are undermining our democracy by conspiring to sell their public office.”

At that time, federal prosecutors urged Wolf to send Sal away for more than 12 years. But Wolf felt that eight years in jail might send a sufficient jolt to other State House pols flirting with the idea of going sideways.

Sal appeared healthy enough to do the minimum of about six years before heading to a halfway house. But fate stepped in. Whatever example Mark Wolf wanted to make of Sal DiMasi has been magnified significantly by the cancers that have attacked his esophagus and his prostate over these past five years. He is suffering in a way that has now far transcended his original sin of “honest service fraud.”

Fate has done more than underscore Mark Wolf’s no-nonsense federal sentence of eight years in prison. It has morphed it into the edges of cruelty.

In court Tuesday, Wolf made it clear that he never intended his stiff sentence to be a death sentence. I believe that.

It’s time to bring Sal home. He’s paid his price.