The word of the day is “unfettered.”
That’s the kind of discretion Hampden Superior Court Judge David Ricciardone said he wanted when he was first nominated for a hack state judgeship back in 2004.
“My own view of the use of discretion,” he wrote to the Governor’s Council, “is that it must be as unfettered as possible to promote the ends of justice.”
The ends of justice? Given his recent behavior on the bench, surely Ricciardone meant to say he wanted to promote the “end of justice.”
Over the last week or so, Ricciardone has certainly been “unfettered” in his attempts to mollycoddle the absolute worst of the worst criminals in Springfield.
Last week, an accused murderer by the name of Rafael Martinez walked out the door of the local jail on $50,000 bond – despite the desperate pleas of the district attorney to keep the accused killer behind bars while he awaits a trial that could lead to life imprisonment with no chance of parole.
Martinez is accused of shooting a guy sitting in a car outside his house six times. I’m sure he’s not a flight risk, right?
The mayor of Springfield called the judge’s decision to cut Martinez loose a “joke.” And like the DA, he’s a Democrat.
But wait, there’s more. Last week Ricciardone also had before him three felons who had pleaded guilty to a home invasion of a 63-year-old woman, after which they poured gasoline over her head and then flicked a lighter next to her ear before she finally gave them her ATM card.
In addition to home invasion, the three thugs pleaded guilty to armed burglary, armed robbery, kidnapping and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon on a person over 60.
The Hampden County DA, Anthony Gulluni, asked the bleeding-heart judge to give the perps 30-35 years. Instead, Harvard man Ricciardone sentenced two of them to between 8 and 10 years, and the third to 12 to 14 years.
In other words, he threw the book at the vicious fiends. A comic book.
The DA was appalled, describing the crime to the local newspaper:
“It was among the most inhuman, heinous things I’ve ever heard. It absolutely shocks the conscience and it’s just horrifying…I mean this is monstrous behavior. We wouldn’t treat animals like this. We would be horrified if an animal were treated this way.”
But Ricciardone pointed out that the victim, despite being terrified of being raped and set afire, was actually not “injured.”
“I find that (statement) incredibly offensive,” Gulluni said.
So who is this “unfettered” jurist? Would you be shocked to learn that, post-Harvard, he was incubated in the epicenter of almost all the current dysfunction in Massachusetts law enforcement – the Worcester County district attorney’s office.
Another ADA in that hackerama was one Timothy Bibaud, father of the admitted junkie prostitute whose OUI case the top brass of the Mass State Police tried to broom last fall, threatening to fire honest staties who refused to roll over for the payroll patriots. Ali Bibaud, the admitted hooker, is likewise a former employee of the Worcester County DA’s office.
So too is the secretary of public safety, Daniel Bennett, who now stands accused in a massive federal lawsuit of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice in the failed brooming of the case of the judge’s daughter.
When he was governor, Mitt Romney preferred to appoint prosecutors, thinking they were less likely to go, shall we say, all Ricciardone on him. Obviously, this was not a foolproof plan. The next governor, Small Deval Patrick, promoted the bleeding heart to the Superior Court in 2011.
Ricciardone was sworn in by then-Lt. Gov. Tim “Crash” Murray, shortly before Crash resigned in disgrace after going airborne in a state car at 108 m.p.h. on I-190 after the corruption indictment of his dear friend and fellow hack Michael McLaughlin.
The taxpayers were never able to learn who “Crash” was talking to on his state cellphone in the moments before his crash. The newspapers were stonewalled in our requests for the phone records by one of Bennett’s hack predecessors as secretary of public safety, who was quickly rewarded with a judgeship of her own, which has since enabled her to cut loose an alleged foreign gangbanger rapist in Newton who quickly fled the country.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….
Emails were sent to the flacks for the Massachusetts judiciary, asking if Ricciardone wanted to explain his recent decisions, and also how close he was to Judge Bibaud in their days together at the Worcester County DA’s office. Through the Trial Court, he declined to respond – no surprise there.
He’s a judge in Massachusetts, after all, totally unaccountable. He’s gotten three $6,250 raises in the last 15 months, he’s getting another one July 1, and he never has to run for reelection. Talk about unfettered….
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
