Public defenders in Massachusetts aim to help the sexually dangerous beat the rap at all costs, according to an advertisement posted online for a state-funded seminar.
The Boston Herald reports the full-day seminar, originally titled, “Winning Despite the Bastards: Sexually Dangerous Persons Litigation and You,” was slated to be held today at the downtown office of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, or CPCS. The program was reportedly canceled due to “lack of interest,” however.
You can’t fault the writer of the proposed session outline for not trying hard to drum up interest. The paper reports the seminar’s agenda listed on the CPCS website included the following topics:
- “Wrapping your client in the flag, the Constitution, the Bible, truth, justice and the American way.”
- “Forcing the commonwealth’s experts to draw bulls-eyes on their butts for later use at trial.”
- “Objections: Making sure the judge and jury hate the prosecutor rather than you.”
- “Humanizing the scary man next to you.”
Organizers also promised, according to the Herald, to teach defense attorneys to identify jurors “positively disposed toward convicted rapists and child molesters.”
The planned seminar comes in the wake of a law that allows district attorneys to seek indefinite incarceration for sexually dangerous persons – even after they’ve done their time.
“It’s shocking. I think it’s completely unacceptable,” the paper quotes Criminal Justice Committee House Chairman James Vallee as saying. “I’m shocked they would ever run a program for learning how to win at all costs with the intention of putting sexually dangerous people back on the street.”
CPCS chief counsel William Leahy told the Herald the title and objectionable language in the program outline were changed about two weeks ago.
“It was problematic,” he said. “It has been changed. It should not have been done. It was the work of a single person who got a little overzealous in trying to drum up interest in the seminar, and it was unintentionally offensive.”
Leahy said it has been hard to find competent lawyers to defend the sexually dangerous at hearings called for by the 3-year-old law.
“Balancing an individual’s freedom and the safety of the public is a serious thing. It really shouldn’t be sensationalized and trivialized,” the Herald quotes David Traub, spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney William Keating, as saying. “The [agenda] subtitles seemed to reduce it to warped gamesmanship, and that really serves no one’s purpose.”
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