Tougher law may backfire

Hard cases make bad law. The old legal adage could apply to a new effort to change state law in response to the Bella Bond case, by requiring harsher punishments for those who come to the aid of a person who kills a child.

Now, there is nothing but good intent here. The fact that Rachelle Bond served less than two years for covering up her own child’s death and helping her boyfriend dispose of the body after he killed her is quite simply horrifying.

Then again the entire case was horrifying, from start to finish. There was the initial discovery of a little girl’s body, washed up on a Winthrop beach. The terrible circumstances, we learned later, of her very short life. And yes, the fact that her drug-addicted mother served only 665 days for being an accessory after the fact.

But it was Rachelle Bond’s testimony that helped secure the conviction of Michael P. McCarthy, who is doing 20 to life for squeezing the life out of little Bella. Without that testimony — as shaky as it was — there might have been no one held accountable at all. Bond was released after testifying against McCarthy and went directly into drug treatment, which outraged many.

Rep. RoseLee Vincent wants to increase the maximum sentence for a person convicted of being an accessory after a child’s murder to up to 20 years (the current maximum is seven). “I think that punishment should fit the crime,” Vincent told the Herald. “In this case I don’t think it did.”

It didn’t. But consider whether a 20-year prison sentence might have frightened Rachelle Bond out of cooperating at all. These are the painful tradeoffs prosecutors sometimes have to make. In the end it wasn’t the letter of the law that failed Bella Bond; it was the adults in her life who were supposed to protect her.