For Gerald Amirault of Massachusetts, who got, for crimes that never took place, a prison sentence far longer than the one Abbott got for murdering a fellow prisoner, there are, of course, no hopes of a parade of celebrities urging his release. Neither a Maoist, nor a murderer, nor a writer who saw in prison a metaphor for the corrupt nature of American society, nor, above all, a criminal guilty of the charges against him, his is not a case likely to have commended itself to the attention of literary society, as Jack Abbott's did back in the 1980s. His sole revolutionary act was to refuse, as his similarly guiltless mother and sister did, to "take responsibility" for molesting minors, and go and sit in classes for sex offenders.Literary society might, of course, if it were disposed, have found much of interest in Gerald Amirault, his prosecutors, and the corrupted Supreme Judicial Court that has kept him imprisoned. For those interested, we have the case of the state's current governor, Jane Swift. Six months after her own parole board unanimously called for commutation of his sentence--and pointed out, in a way unprecedented for such a body, the ludicrous charges, the grave doubts as to the justice of this prosecution--Gov. Swift has still been unable to bring herself to act one way or another.
A variety of reasons have been offered--one being that she had promised the accusing children and their families she would make no decision over the Christmas holidays, in order to avoid causing pain, whatever that decision might be. Then the governor was busy finding a willing running mate for the gubernatorial election in November--a grueling effort evidently, considering the number of her choices who decided it might be best to let the opportunity pass. Now there is talk that the scandal of child abuse charged to priests in Massachusetts could cause the governor to decide the political risk is too great to agree to commutation for Gerald.
The rest of that column is at http://www.opinionjournal.com/medialog/?id=100001695.
A site dedicated to spreading the facts about the Amirault case is here: http://cltg.org/cltg/amirault/amiraults.htm.
I hope Romney is willing to take some action on this travesty. The way Swifty sleazed out on it is disgusting.
Thank you for posting Dorothy Rabinowitz's words on the Amirault case. It was through her series of "Darkness in Massachusetts" columns in the WSJ that I found out about the Amirault case. It is crystal clear to ANYONE without an ax to grind in the case that the Amiraults were railroaded! One reason their cases were never allowed to be re-opened was because Scott Harshbarger was the Prosecuter in the case and by the time major questions began to be asked he had become Attorney General of MA and he wasn't ABOUT to admit he'd made a mistake. I believe I'm right on Harshbarger; any of y'all who were living in MA at the time can correct me if that's not the case. But all I know is that those poor people were caught up in the 80's witch hunt for child molesters in Day care centers. And again, if I'm not mistaken, every other person who was charged anywhere with that during the 80's is already out of jail, including Bucky McMartin in CA whose widely reported trial I believe started it all!