“More than four years after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now 26, was convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the city’s worst terrorist attack, the proceeding has shifted to the federal appeals court in Boston. The focus will now be on the conduct of prosecutors, defense attorneys, the presiding judge — even the jury — with one central question at issue: Did Tsarnaev get a fair trial?

“Oral arguments before three judges of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit are slated for Thursday. Tsarnaev is not expected to attend. Instead, lawyers are set to joust for two hours over legal questions such as whether the trial should have been held in Boston, and whether jurors failed to reveal their anti-Tsarnaev biases to the judge.
— Boston Globe, 12/7/19

There is this accepted belief that all who are brought before a judge are being prosecuted by ethical legal personnel who behave accordingly. We’re to believe that judges are beyond reproach and their verdicts are fair. But depending on where you live, that’s not always the case and many lives were permanently ruined and those responsible continue to receive generous taxpayer-funded compensation to this day.

Massachusetts prosecutors have violated defendants’ rights to a fair trial regularly and without punishment, even as wrongfully convicted victims of tainted prosecutions have spent years in prison before being freed, decades of court rulings show.

The state’s Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court have reversed at least 120 criminal convictions since 1985 in part or entirely because of the prosecuting attorney’s misconduct described in the judges’ rationale for the overturned verdicts.

The New England Center for Investigative Reporting found no case in Massachusetts where a prosecutor was disbarred for professional misconduct since 1974, when the state Board of Bar Overseers was created to hear complaints against attorneys. Only two public reprimands for professional misconduct were found in that 42-year span, and they came without fines or other punishment.

At least seven prosecutors whose behavior prompted courts to reverse convictions went on to higher posts. Some became judges and district attorneys.
— WGBH, 4/3/16

What does it say about a system where you can be highly compensated to screw people over knowing that in that rare instance if you’re busted, you’ll receive no punitive repercussion, in fact you may even be promoted?

BTW — If you’re a busted judge, you just need to cry.

Judge Shelley M Richmond Joseph and trial court officer Wesley MacGregor are accused of conspiring to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from taking an undocumented immigrant into custody at Newton District Court on April 2, 2018.

Joseph had allegedly ordered the courtroom recording device to be turned off for 52 seconds while she and the defendant Jose Medina-Perez’s lawyer had a conversation about getting him out of the courthouse instead of handing him over to an ICE officer, according to the indictment. MacGregor allegedly used his access badge to release Medina-Perez through a rear door.

Joseph was seen crying when she left federal court in Boston Thursday.
— Daily Mail, 4/26/19

What this has revealed is yet another branch of government employees who are quick to show no mercy those who come before them in a court of law but will circle the wagons and shield themselves from the ramifications of their own illegal actions.

The judge’s supporters say she is no crusader, but an inexperienced judge who stumbled into a bitterly contested area of the law. They warn that if the case goes forward, it will open the door for prosecution of other judges, undercutting their independence, as the country grapples with its deep divisions over immigration.

“Prosecution of other judges….” You mean there are more law-breaking judges and if so, will we ever find out how many?

Judge Joseph has refused a plea deal that would have allowed her to avoid prosecution if she admitted violating federal law, signaling that she is prepared to go to trial in a case that could drag on for years. For a federal prosecutor to indict a state judge is so rare that, in search of a Massachusetts precedent, observers have cast back to 1787, when Judge William Whiting was removed from the bench for defending a farmer’s rebellion against state tax collectors.

This summer, the state Supreme Judicial Court ordered the restoration of her $184,000 salary while the case is pending, for fear that the threat of being stripped of a paycheck would make judges hesitant to challenge prosecutors, diminishing the “over-all independence of the judiciary.”
— New York Times, 11/16/19

Heaven forbid a Massachusetts judge be in peril of not making a mortgage payment, paying utilities or eating; something they show little consideration of when passing their decisions down on those who’ve professed their innocence against prosecutors who are only interested in their win totals so they can hopefully size themselves for black robes.

“It’s one thing to make a mistake. It’s another to have your life ruined. I hope she’ll emerge from this, but it’s a tough way to learn a lesson.”
— Scott Harshbarger, former state attorney general

Ironic hearing this come from someone who slept well after sending people, who pled their innocence, up the river.

Judicial malfeasance should not be considered an anomaly, but we are talking about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Defense attorneys will also argue that trial Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. erroneously withheld evidence from jurors that Tsarnaev’s older brother and accomplice, Tamerlan, had brutally killed three people two years earlier — a point that could have bolstered their argument that Tamerlan was the mastermind of the bombing and, had he lived to be tried, the only one deserving of a death sentence.

Regardless of your opinion on the sentence and your position on the death penalty, everyone brought into a United States court of law deserves a fair trial. Prosecutors shouldn’t be messing with or withholding evidence and the same should go for judges. People brought before the legal system should also not be used as stepping stones for personal advancement, thus rendering their lives irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

And we won’t even get into the numerous Massachusetts politicians, mostly Democrat, who’ve broken all kinds of laws, and some are walking free to this day.

Former House speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi was one of many government officials in Massachusetts who have been indicted.

DiMasi is one of THREE Democrat House speakers indicted. Something about fish rotting from the head down…?

Some politicians have used their legislative powers for illicit private gain, and some have faced arraignment due to misconduct in public.

From bribery and extortion to patronage and nepotism to drunken driving and sexual assault, politicians in Massachusetts have been arrested for almost all kinds of violations.
— Boston.com

This is what happens when prosecutorial wolves guard the people’s hen house and apparently will continue to happen for the foreseeable future.