Tag: Harvey Silverglate

“Unprincipled pragmatism”

Noted civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, blogging at ThePhoenix.com, says Gov. Deval Patrick is more interested in liberalism than he is in liberty. The bill of particulars:

  • Patrick’s proposal to outlaw Internet gambling, which would, of course, cut into the revenues from the three casinos he hopes to see built.
  • His support for an expanded anti-free-speech buffer zone around abortion clinics.
  • His opposition to the decriminalization of marijuana.

“Surely it is possible to be a liberal, supporting a society that does not allow its most vulnerable members to sink into an abyss, while advocating at the same time the maximum individual liberty consistent with what the Supreme Court has called ‘an ordered society,’ ” Silverglate writes. “Thus far it does not appear that Deval Patrick is that kind of liberal. But maybe it’s still too early to give up hope on this score.”

Class warfare

Carpundit has taken me to task for telling the Globe that Tom Finneran is someone with “some class and some dignity.” Carpundit instructs: “He is a convicted felon.” The Scoop offers a similar observation.

I’m not going to reargue the case against Finneran, except to say, again, that I think it was largely bogus, not to mention politically motivated. Essentially, Finneran was given a choice: Plead guilty to trumped-up charges or go to prison. If you haven’t done so before, I do urge you to read Harvey Silverglate’s take, published in 2005.

Am I a Finneran lackey? In 2004, when he was still speaker, I profiled him for the Phoenix. You be the judge.

Finneran takes the hit

Frank Phillips and Shelley Murphy report in today’s Boston Globe that former Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran will plead guilty to obstruction of justice in a legislative-redistricting case. In return, Finneran will not go to prison and will not face federal perjury charges.

The charges have always struck me as faintly ridiculous. As Harvey Silverglate pointed out in this piece in the Boston Phoenix a year and a half ago, U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan would have had a difficult time proving that Finneran did anything other than parse his words a little too cutely when he testified in the redistricting case. There was also no reason to think that whatever obfuscation Finneran engaged in was “material” to the outcome — key to proving perjury. In a remarkably prescient passage, Silverglate wrote:

Given the merits of his case, Sullivan is unlikely to prevail unless he pressures Finneran into accepting a plea bargain. Sullivan has many weapons at his disposal for applying such pressure, not the least of which is his power to recommend that if Finneran pleads guilty, the judge refrain from imposing a prison term. But Sullivan’s power to indict (it is rightly said that a federal prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich) and to pressure Finneran into a plea bargain is not the standard by which a federal prosecutor is supposed to decide whether to charge a citizen.

Silverglate closed that observation with this: “Besides, the former Speaker’s legendary toughness might well thwart any effort to pressure him into pleading guilty.” Sometimes, though, even a tough guy knows when to take the deal that’s offered him — regardless of whether he’s actually guilty.