Joining the bashing brigade against Judge Tuttman is easy enough, especially when it gives the local media- politics regime another chance to bash Mitt Romney over the Tavares fiasco.
Even WTKK’s Michael Graham is getting into the act, according to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly:
A reasoned Boston Herald editorial, for example, avoided the temptation to skewer Tuttman and instead pointed out that “[s]tate correction officials didn’t seek a criminal complaint until June, when the case could have been handled long before he was released.”
The Boston Globe’s editorial board spoke a day later, calling for answers but acknowledging that “after 17 years as a prosecutor in Essex County, Tuttman was well qualified to be a judge.”
But these pieces came several days after the story broke. In the meantime, the deafening silence of our court officials had done its damage.
The only explanation of the matter from the court came in a canned statement from Superior Court Chief Justice Barbara J. Rouse, who did little more than defend Tuttman in a few paragraphs.
Why didn’t the court aggressively distribute the transcript from the bail hearing? Why were there no representatives of the court explaining all of the procedural nuances that were bound to be lost on the public?
Unfortunately, this sort of inaction emboldens people like the odious Michael Graham, a WTKK talk-show host who submitted a lazy rant to the Boston Herald that was bereft of any sort of research whatsoever. The piece arrived at a caveman-level conclusion: that Tuttman had been appointed only because Romney wanted to add some “chicks” to the bench. “The real ‘scandal,’” he wrote, “is how an unimpressive prosecutor became a superior court judge in the first place.”Herald columnist Margery Eagan, meanwhile, lamented that reporters got “no answers” from the judiciary. Without those answers, she was left to conclude that “[t]he effect, after a decision like Tuttman’s, is to further undermine public trust in a judiciary which … makes nutty decisions and refuses to explain them.”
Is this the new price of admission at Hub talk stations? Bash Romney, keep quiet about Deval Patrick’s own long history of love for criminals and keep your talk radio gig. Just be prepared to part with your soul.
Too bad the big picture is a pattern of pro-thug sentiment that has been stinking up our state’s corrupt judicial system for decades. Even if Romney didn’t do as much as he should have, focusing blame on him misses the elephant in the room.
Romney didn’t pull a Dukakis here. The judge is to blame. Remove her immediately.
The judge needs to go, period.
Boy, I am licking my chops over this story. We are looking for stories like this (with real meat) here in NY. I really like stories I can sink my teeth into. A real belly-buster of a story.