It’s an epidemic – clueless hack state judges cutting loose career criminals who then commit horrible crimes against the citizenry, often only hours after these idiots in black robes get all teary-eyed about them and cut them loose over the desperate pleas of the cops.
Just ask Springfield District Court Judge John Payne. Last week he had in front of him a nice young man named Donte King, who had been picked up by local cops and charged with carrying a loaded firearm without a license (it had been reported stolen in South Carolina). He was also charged with a firearm violation with three prior violent drug crimes.
The Hampden County district attorney asked that bail be set at $25,000. Judge Payne said… $10,000.
Can you guess what happened next?
About 24 hours later, a guy was shot to death in a parked car. As he lay dying, cops asked him who’d plugged him. “Donte,” he croaked out. It’s called a dying declaration.
Now Donte King is back in custody, with a $250,000 bond. Let’s let the mayor of Springfield, Domenic Sarno, pick up the narrative from here:
“What the hell does it take to hold and keep these repeat violent offenders off our streets and out of our neighborhoods!”
For the record, Sarno is a Democrat.
“We’re doing our job,” he continued, in a press release, “I ask the courts to do theirs. I wonder at times if some judges are more prone to protecting and coddling violent repeat offenders than protecting our law-abiding citizens.”
We’re all wondering the same thing, Your Honor, and it’s not just about this latest bleeding heart judge Payne. It’s his fellow state hacks like “Touchy” Feeley and David Ricciardone and Mark Coven and – the list, sadly, is too long to even complete here.
Like most of these $184,694-a-year bums, Payne has a record of coddling fiends and monsters. Here’s a story from last year: “A judge has refused to revoke the bail of a Springfield man charged with whipping a teenage relative with an electrical cord despite his last arrest for allegedly stealing a 50-inch TV set from his cousin’s apartment.”
One guess on the judge’s name. Payne cut this perp’s bail from $10,000 to $2500. In case you were wondering, the teenager was a girl, and the arrestee weighed 325 pounds.
What happens when it becomes obvious that the hack, part-time judiciary of Massachusetts cares not a whit about public safety? Can anyone explain the consequences?
“When a judge disregards the concern of public safety or fails to keep it in the forefront of his or her thought process, I think there develops a potential for distrust or cynicism by the community for the criminal justice system. This potential loss by the citizens in my opinion poses a serious potential detriment to our society.”
Do you know who wrote those wise words? Judge Payne, back in 2001, when he was nominated for the bench by the late Gov. Paul Cellucci. Obviously, this was before he lost his mind.
A call was placed to the Trial Court yesterday seeking Payne’s comment on his coddling of Donte last week. The call was not returned.
By the way, Payne wasn’t the only bust-out hack making terrible decisions from the bench this month. How about US District Court Judge George O’Toole tossing a lawsuit filed by two honest state troopers against the corrupt Massachusetts State Police, who tried to fix a drunk-driving case for a hack state judge?
I mention O’Toole because before he was appointed to the federal bench he was, yes, a state judge, just like… Payne and Feeley and the drunk driver’s hack father Bibaud and a host of other overpaid, underworked reprobates.
In his brooming of the honest troopers’ lawsuit, the former Mike Dukakis appointee said the allegations of the earlier brooming of a state OUI case did not “shock the conscience.”
Of course it didn’t shock O’Toole’s conscience. A good hack Democrat, he used to give money to Barney Frank, Hot Bottom’s significant other. He ponied up for Felon Finneran, the convicted felon House speaker. And George Bachrach – how are your pinky-ring Teamster pals doing, Georgie? O’Toole dug deep for John Kerry, Eddie Markey, Joe Kennedy…I could go on with a list of the worst and the dumbest, but… my conscience is shocked.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
