Columnists :: Reality Check
Coakley for U.S. Senate? Not so fast... by Jeff Epperly
contributing editorWednesday Sep 16, 2009 No doubt much of the excitement that’s seeming to coalesce in this community around the announced candidacy of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat has to do with her July decision that the state would officially challenge the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). It’s an important milestone that the Commonwealth has decided to put its weight behind the effort to repeal DOMA -- and it speaks well of Coakley -- but it mostly says a great deal about how far this community has come in our quest to expect more than just lip service from our elected officials.
But before we make any decision early we would do well to compare Coakley to other candidates and, more importantly, to look more closely at her record when deciding if she really is someone who might replace Kennedy as that rare kind of U.S. senator who does what it right even when it might not be politically comfortable. There are some black spots on Coakley’s record that suggest that, were she up against a wall politically, she might sell us out in ways that Kennedy would never have contemplated.
For example, it was only last year that Coakley joined certain district attorneys and others in an ill-considered crusade against Question 2, the ballot initiative that eventually decriminalized possession of an ounce or less of marijuana in Massachusetts. Coakley did not distinguish herself as particularly brave when she played the save-the-children card and noted in an Oct. 31 press release that "decriminalization of marijuana will send a message to children and young adults that it is okay to use and abuse illegal substances."
The press release continued: "Attorney General Coakley and the other Question 2 opponents also urged the public to consider the mental health effects of marijuana, particularly on teenagers. They noted that marijuana can mask the symptoms of depression or make depression worse. Marijuana use can also lead to schizophrenia, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts."
Let’s put aside for purposes of this article the fact that most of what Coakley said in that press release is, to put it mildly, a generous reading of the limited scientific literature related to marijuana use, depression, suicide, and teenagers. Anecdotal reports from Coakley’s cronies don’t count. The truth is that we know relatively little about marijuana’s effects on anyone’s brain precisely because the government’s myopic drug policies have stunted research into the field. But even if that were not true, Question 2 didn’t decriminalize marijuana use by non-adults, nor did it make it legal to provide marijuana to children. Question 2 was targeted at adult marijuana use, period.
It was suggested to me this week that Coakley’s hands were tied because, as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, she had no choice but to oppose Question 2. I disagree. A more principled politician might have looked at the numbers and decided that, by any measure, the countless families, careers and lives that are destroyed by the senseless marijuana-related prosecutions that clog our criminal justice system more than negate whatever small benefit this society derives -- and whatever forfeiture funding law enforcement seizes -- in prosecuting a drug that causes far less damage than alcohol.
A more courageous politician might have looked at how marijuana prosecutions -- and, more importantly, marijuana-related convictions -- fall disproportionately on the poor and people of color and decided that the system does not handle marijuana prosecutions fairly and creates criminals where none should be. It doesn’t even take that much courage to acknowledge these facts, as the lopsided vote totals in favor of Question 2 proved conclusively. Yet Coakley chose demagoguery over sanity on an issue where even the voters are willing to give her political cover.
But there are even more ominous signs from Coakley’s past that should give pause to any of us who’ve been on the receiving end of dishonest, shrill campaigns by law enforcement and politicians to "save the children" from imagined dangers.
In 1984, the state of Massachusetts began the insane prosecutions in the now-infamous Fells Acres Day Care case, which stands as one of the darkest modern examples of how overzealous prosecutors hell bent on media stardom can meld bizarre pop psychology, frightened parents, and impressionable children into frenzied show trials that would have fit neatly into Salem in 1692.
We now know that the discredited methods used to elicit bizarre stories from grade school children regarding witchcraft, orgies, magic clowns, and animal sacrifices in the Fells Acres case almost certainly led to Middlesex County sending innocent people to jail and ruining their lives -- including the family matriarch, Violet Amirault, who died in prison.
Coakley was not part of that prosecution team in 1984, but later as DA she did have the chance to do the right thing -- the just thing -- regarding the appeals and sentence commutations of people to whom the state and Middlesex County owe a lifetime of apologies for the Fells Acres debacle. Instead, Coakley chose to continue the charade that the prosecutions were egregious examples of prosecutorial misconduct. She even organized a late-in-the-game smear campaign against Gerald Amirault when she should have met him at the prison gates and asked for forgiveness.
In the end, Coakley has proven herself to be a very dangerous person indeed when entrusted with the awesome power of arrest and incarceration. And now she wants to fill the seat of a man who was, in many ways, her complete opposite when it comes to political courage? At the very least I’d expect her to sell us out the first time it was expedient to do so.
She may have changed. But I’ve yet to see any proof of that.
Jeff Epperly is the former editor of Bay Windows. He can be reached at jepperly@laquidas.com
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