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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (228914)	11/22/2007 11:51:52 AM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793914

Mitt appointed this crazy judge. It's his problem. This is what Ed has to say about it over at Captains Quarters The e-mails I have received about this today, based on a report at Free Republic, call this Romney's Willie Horton event. Romney's opponents there and elsewhere claim these murders are a "direct result of Romney's liberal appointments to the bench," and a foretaste of what will come from a Romney presidency. Unfortunately, this is quite an exaggeration. First, though, one cannot overstate the foolishness and outright stupidity of Judge Tuttman. Here we have a man who carved up his own mother charged with two more violent offenses of a milder variety just after his release from prison on the original charge. The $50,000 bail requested by prosecutors seems rather reasonable, perhaps even somewhat low. Sending him off on an OR basis is simply ludicrous, and Tuttman should answer for this strange decision. This, however, differs from the Horton issue with Michael Dukakis in two important ways. First, judicial appointments in Massachusetts work very differently than at the federal level. As with New York City, a judicial panel recommends a few candidates for each opening to the Governor, who rarely if ever works outside the system. These candidates get reviewed by the panel through their records, but with their names removed, in order to ensure fairness. Tuttman would have appeared to be a good candidate; she had a good track record as a prosecutor, and had won convictions in some higher-profile cases. Romney's critics then complained that he hadn't appointed more women to the bench. He pressed the Judicial Nominating Commission to provide more potential female candidates for appointments. This demonstrates that Romney had only small latitude in selecting these candidates. The Horton incident stuck to Dukakis for other reasons. Horton raped a woman and stabbed her fiance after being released on a work-furlough program, even though he had already committed murder and had a life sentence. Dukakis had supported this program as governor, claiming it as an important tool for criminal rehabilitation, while critics castigated him and the state for allowing lifers with no possibility of release outside of clemency into the furlough program. (Horton had been sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years.) In fact, Dukakis had vetoed a bill prohibiting the entry of lifers into the rehab program -- which would have kept Horton behind bars where he belonged. Romney's appointment in Tuttman certainly turned out badly, but one has to understand the context of that appointment. The nomination process has burdensome limits, and the selection of a successful prosecutor for that slot would certainly have given some confidence that the new judge would err on the side of caution from the bench. Tragically, that hope was dashed and two people have had their lives senselessly ended -- but that responsibility falls on the shoulders of the judge herself, and of course the murderer.