So, it appears that a judge had a couple of lawyers in front of him today. That’s normal enough. One of those lawyers, the one defending a protestor that was arrested for protesting the Straight Pride Parade in Boston, wanted the case dismissed. Also, pretty much par for the course. The other lawyer, the prosecutor, also wanted the case dismissed. Not an everyday occurrence, I would guess. But also not crazy unusual. There may several reasons a prosecutor might tell the judge they would rather not prosecute the case. In this case there were two main reasons. There was a lack of info on the arrest report (including stuff like a decent description of what activities this protestor was engaged in and a lack of any identifiable victim of her actions). Indeed, it was the prosecutor that filed the motion to dismiss.
Since both the prosecutor (y’know, the one that should be all ready to get convictions and that sorta thing) and the defense lawyer agreed that there was no case here, the judge decided to decline the motion to dismiss. That’s a bit f’d up to say the least. The defense lawyer then decided to read supporting case law for her buddy of the day, the prosecutor. This gave the judge a sad and he let the law-reading lawyer know that reading law in a court room was not a thing that could happen today. The defense lawyer however appeared to have liked the laws so much that she kept reading them. We can’t be really sure without asking her why she loved laws the way she did. Maybe it because laws limit the power of tyrants. And, maybe, just maybe, the judge sensed the same thing. Because, as the lawyer kept reading laws in a courtroom, a room where he declared that no laws should be read because it was his courtroom, the judge’s sad turned to mad and he he ordered her to be arrested and led out of the courtroom in shackles.
From the Boston Herald
Attorney Susan Church was held in contempt of court for several hours Wednesday by Boston Municipal Court Judge Richard Sinnott while defending Lilley Antoinette, 29, a protester from Somerville who was charged with disorderly conduct at the Straight Pride Parade in Boston Saturday.
Church blasted Sinnot hours later, saying she was “Unlawfufully, unreasonably and honestly outrageously arrested for doing my job.”
“All I was trying to do was read the law to the court,” she said. “And I was summarily arrested, handcuffed, brought down to the holding cell, held there for hours…Simply for doing my job and advocating for my client.”
More Boston Herald coverage
From the WBUR website:
Sinnott, a 2017 appointee by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, was criticized by some legal experts Tuesday after his unexpected decisions to ignore the Suffolk County prosecutors' case dismissal requests.
Like Church, Jeff Feuer is representing those who protested the parade as a member of the National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts, and he was also inside the courtroom Wednesday.
Feuer characterized Sinnott's move to ignore prosecutors' wishes as "extremely rare," and added he believed it was an unusual step for a judge to jail a defense lawyer.
More WBUR Coverage
After the incident, the defendant commented on the incident, telling reporters, “My Lawyer is a Bad-Ass”
Wonder if self professed conservatives will get all twisted up about this “activist judge”. (Not really. I understand they only have principles when they are convenient.)
Thursday, Sep 5, 2019 · 12:26:03 AM +00:00 · netop
Thanks y’all for the rec list.
Not really a big breaking news update here.. more of a fun factoid. As kossack FoundingFatherDAR mentions below, the judge here, Richard Sinnott, is the son of Boston’s last City Censor (retired 1980), who helped prolong the long standing label, BANNED IN BOSTON. Works that earned the label BANNED IN BOSTON included: poetry (such as Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman), theater (A couple from Eugene O’Neill over the years — Edward Albee changed some lines in order to allow Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in order to let the show go up), and fiction. In 1927, Boston took target at writers who had Sinclair in their name or happened to have been WW1 ambulance drivers (a pair of each were banned that year).
The first thing I thought of was this record, by Rusty Warren. That led to wonder if she had been banned in Boston by this judge’s dad. Time frame matches, but it turns out… nope. She was never banned in Boston. She was just using the popular catch phrase as the title of her new record. I guess that explains why there is a question mark at the end — I’d wondered about that in the past.
Anyway, if you want to check out 60 year old racy comedy, here you go:
And If you want to read some interesting tidbits about this best selling star who managed to sell out shows and made it to the charts without TV or radio support…
A link from a WFMU blog