Question: Why should judges in Massachusetts be elected?
Answer: Superior Court Judge Timothy “Touchy” Feeley.
You would think that after this damn fool recently cut the bail on a tattooed career criminal who then almost immediately drove to Maine to gun down a cop in cold blood, Touchy would finally try to exercise a little caution, at least for a while, and maybe not bend over backwards to coddle, say, a Dominican heroin dealer.
So what if Manuel Soto-Vittini had 40 bags of heroin in two hidden compartments of his Volvo, not to mention some cocaine? So what if his brother is also a convicted heroin dealer. His lawyer argued that if this Third Worlder went to prison, he might be deported, and that would be “catastrophic.”
Catastrophic for whom, you ask. Well, maybe his customers. Who would sell them their heroin, considering his brother got real time after his conviction. What did George W. Bush say – they’re only doing the jobs Americans won’t do.
He wasn’t exactly illegal, but what does that matter anyway? He had a couple of anchor babies by his wife, er, girlfriend. Besides, as Marsha Coakley once said, “Technically, it is not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts.” Touchy thought the world of Marsha – he gave her $2000 cash when it looked like she would someday be appointing judges, as governor.
But that was not to be. So Touchy, who, like so many of the state’s worst judges, was born in New York, started sending cash to Deval Patrick, who was born in Illinois. Touchy was quickly rewarded with a judgeship.
Let’s revisit a few of the headlines about his wonderful decade-long career:
“Alleged heroin ringleader jumps bail… Man out of bail in drug case arrested for trafficking heroin….
Touchy Feeley also doesn’t believe that credit-card fraudsters from Central Falls should make restitution or face jail time – “Judge defends suspended sentences in $160K credit card fraud.”
As much as he likes heroin dealers, Touchy is even softer on sex offenders:
“Alleged sex predator released after hearing… Judge releases Salem man charged in sexual abuse… Alleged Pervert’s Release Scares Boy… Judge further lowers bail in Salem rape case… Bail for alleged flasher reduced.”
Of course these are just “anecdotes,” as his benefactor Deval used to say about any horrific crimes committed by his constituents.
“Tim Feeley,” Deval proclaimed when he appointed Touchy, after the last check cleared, “brings to the trial bench humility and an understanding of the human condition that will ensure fair and thoughtful administration of justice.”
Here’s how thoughtful he is. This time he cut the Dominican heroin dealer loose because he was only doing it… for the money. Selling heroin to Americans was merely a “money crime,” the judge said.
“This was not a drug addict who was dealing to fund his own addiction,” Feeley said, according to the Salem News, “but rather, a person who made some terrible judgments and decisions, but made them for what he thought was in the best interest of his family.”
Hey, it beats working. Es verdad. And if anyone knows how to make terrible judgments, it’s Touchy Feeley. As for the judge personally, heroin dealers are no problemo, as his newest Class A distributing amigo might say. You see, the judge from Syracuse now lives in chi-chi Marblehead. These nutty judges always live far from the carnage wrought by the vermin they set free to kill and rape and maim and rob again and again and again.
Touchy Feely succeeded Margot Botsford, also born in New York, when she got promoted to the SJC. Unlike most judges, even those few who weren’t born in New York, she didn’t have to give money to a governor to get her robes. Her husband, Steve Rosenfeld, was an aide to Gov. Pee Wee Dukakis. A nationwide search!
How would you like to be Judge Thomas Testes, I mean Estes? He’s another disgraced state judge who after being born in New York drifted into Massachusetts to go on a public payroll.
Testes was caught with his pants down, literally, in the Belchertown District Courthouse. He didn’t cut any cop-killers or heroin dealers loose, all he wanted was a little afternoon delight with a female underling.
For looking for love in all the wrong places, Testes is about to lose his lifetime $178,000-a-year part-time job, possibly even before his fourth $6,250 pay raise of the last 18 months on July 1.
Say what you will about Testes, he doesn’t represent nearly the threat to public safety that Touchy does. And yet Touchy, at age 68, will easily make it to mandatory retirement at age 70 in February 2020.
My recurring question is: why can’t the voters decide whether these depraved bust-out lawyers should be ejected from the public trough? There was a police chief in Holyoke who used to file a bill every year to require judges to be elected by the people who are being victimized by the killers and the illegals these tax-fattened hacks cut free daily.
The chief’s bill never got out of committee, and eventually he retired – to South Carolina, where judges are elected, not by the voters, but by the legislature. Not a perfect system, obviously, but better than Massachusetts, where in the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Unless you’re from New York, or the Dominican Republic.