Intellectually, I am opposed to the death penalty. Not because I am overly sentimental about flawed human beings, but because charging someone with carrying out such a cold-blooded, horrendous act strikes me as really gross.
(I will admit that I am the kind of person who chucks palmetto bugs [really BIG roaches] out the door and doesn't kill mosquitoes unless they're biting me, but I try to discount it).
The spouse reminded me that when we were in Manchester, NH, just before the 2006 election, at some sort of visibility, the Attorney General of New Hampshire got all the media attention down the street by announcing that the state was going to seek the death penalty for Michael Addison because the police officer, Michael Briggs, whom he was accused of shooting the day before, had died. I didn't remember that because, from that moment, I tried to ignore the obvious impropriety of an officer of the court announcing a trial strategy when the body of the victim was hardly cold and the presumed shooter was still out of state. The date, as best I can determine was October 17, 2006.
Just three weeks later, our candidate for Congress, Carol Shea-Porter was elected in a stupendous upset of a Republican incumbent -- stupendous because the media and pundits had not expected it. What interest there was was fixated on Paul Hodes, whom the voters elected to replace Charlie Bass, a six term incumbent. It was a clean sweep and made it easy to forget the Attorney General's agenda.
Now, four years later, when Paul Hodes is aiming to move up into the United States Senate, Kelly Ayotte, a candidate for the same office, who precipitously resigned when she'd just been appointed to a second term as Attorney General, makes it impossible to ignore the ignominy she's wanting to heap on the state, which sent one of her predecessors, Justice David Souter, to the Supreme Court.
I'm actually not big on the politics of personal destruction and tend to resist giving the opposition any more notice than is absolutely necessary. But, Kelly Ayotte's record of what I consider prosecutorial malfeasance (keeping in mind that I'm not a lawyer) really can't be overlooked.
Because, you know, it's a timely issue from the perspective of the integrity of our system of justice. As the oral presentation in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee before the Supreme Court revealed, prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity for their performance in office because it is assumed that they merely act as go-betweens for the evidence collectors (law enforcement authorities) and the court (judicial authority). It's a presumption that completely ignores the possibility of personal ambition coloring the manner in which the prosecutor conducts the case.
(The behavior of the prosecutor in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee was so egregious [the prosecutor had manufactured evidence against innocents] that it was pretty clear, after the oral argument, that the SCOTUS decision would come down hard on prosecutorial immunity, for which there's no legal basis, just tradition. So, instead of risking a precedent setting ruling, the County settled the case and used taxpayer money to pay the innocents off).
But, emails that have been produced by the New Hampshire Department of Justice clearly reveal that, within ten days of the crime and more than a week before the accused shooter had even been returned to the state, Kelly Ayotte was plotting how this tragedy could advance her personal ambitions for the seat in Congress that Paul Hodes was about to attain.
In an email exchange (Subject: Re: Get ready to run) with the man who was to become the manager of her campaign for the Senate seat being vacated by Judd Gregg in 2010, she gleefully proclaimed:
Have you followed the last 2 Weeks. A police officer was klilled and I hannounced that I would seek the death penalty?
And the enthusiastic response from her political guru?
I know, I read about it. Where does AG Ayotte stand on the Death Penalty? BY THE SWITCH.
You see, the death penalty is corrosive. But, that's just my reaction. Nine former prosecutors, state and county attorneys have a more professional reaction.
In Briggs case, Ayotte was thinking politics
E-mails reveal a troubling exchange
By John Garvey and John Malmberg / For the Monitor
October 14, 2010
As former prosecutors, we reviewed with grave concern last week's release of Kelly Ayotte's e-mail correspondence from the time that she served as attorney general. Ayotte's e-mail exchange in October 2006 with her now-chief campaign strategist, Robert Varsalone, reveals that her death penalty decision in the Michael Briggs murder case was motivated in part by her political ambitions.
Her conduct runs afoul of the American Bar Association's standards, set by its criminal justice section, which state that "in making the decision to prosecute, the prosecutor should give no weight to the personal or political advantages or disadvantages which might be involved or to a desire to enhance his or her record of convictions" and that "a prosecutor should not permit his or her professional judgment or obligations to be affected by his or her own political, financial, business, property or personal interests."
They go on to mention the specifics.
On Oct. 27, 2006, Varsalone wrote to Ayotte's official attorney general e-mail account to encourage her to seek political office. He described to her the difficulties that then-Congressman Charles Bass faced in his re-election bid against Democrat Paul Hodes and the opportunity for her in the 2nd District if Bass faltered. He even entitled this e-mail "Get ready to run . . ." He made clear to her that the Bass campaign was disorganized and out of touch with the Republican base and would likely lose the election. Without a beat, Ayotte immediately responded: "A police officer was killed, and I announced that I would seek the death penalty." Varsalone then envisioned the theme for her campaign to come: "Where does AG Ayotte stand on the death penalty? BY THE SWITCH."
But, what do they conclude? That this behavior is troubling and violates tradition! Right, it violates tradition. So, why are they concerned? Because it threatens to undermine the whole regimen of absolute immunity prosecutors enjoy by tradition. What a disaster!
Clearly, that's hyperbole. There's no reason why prosecutors should be empowered to act with impunity, by tradition or law. But, it is a fact that, as it stands now, there's no recourse other than the ballot box. That is, if prosecutors are overly ambitions and subordinate justice to their own aspirations (as I happen to believe our friend Martha Coakley did in the British nanny case), then it's up to the voters to nip their ambition in the bud at the ballot box.
One is tempted to lump Kelly Ayotte with the other flakes and fakes Republicans are promoting for some of the highest public offices in the land. But, Ayotte seems to be a genuine punitive pol in her own right -- driven by boundless ambition. She needs to be hauled up short before she does any more damage.
Paul Hodes is a Mensch and will serve us well in the Senate, as he has in the House. It would be a shame if the Tea Party dollars were to deprive us of his service.