Reilly's poor judgment
LAST OCTOBER, teenage sisters Shauna and Meghan Murphy died in an early-morning, one-car accident in Southborough. Police interviews with friends of Shauna Murphy, who was driving, provided evidence she had been drinking during the evening at a party in a Northborough home. Northborough police explored the possibility of charging the 20-year-old host of the party under the state's so-called social host law. This week, they decided not to, apparently in part because the district attorney of Worcester County discouraged them from proceeding.
That would be the end of the story -- a not-unusual case of prosecutors steering local police away from a possible dead end in a courtroom -- if it were not for the phone call from Attorney General Thomas Reilly. In November, Reilly called the Worcester district attorney, John Conte, reminding him that under state law neither the press nor the public has the right to see the details of autopsy reports.
The call from Reilly, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, has turned this family tragedy into a political drama. On Thursday, Governor Romney and Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey criticized Reilly's call as an attempt to interfere with the investigation.
Reilly said he made the call to prevent additional anguish for Murphy's parents, who are friends of Reilly and contributed $300 to his political campaign. It was a gesture that appears well-intended but was unwise, especially in the context of the social-host investigation. Reilly's spokesman has said that at the time of the phone call to Conte, the attorney general was unaware of that investigation. But a law enforcement veteran such as Reilly should have known that an investigation was possible and that a call like his to the county's chief law enforcement officer could be seen as interference.
Conte said in an interview yesterday that he never denied autopsy reports to the Northborough police and that he advised against bringing charges against the party host on the merits of the case. The host, Nathaniel Berberian, and other friends at the party told police that Shauna Murphy came with vodka in a water bottle and did not get alcohol from them. Berberian told police that when Murphy arrived at his party she already appeared intoxicated. ''You could stretch the statute if you wanted to, but I don't think it would be fair to do that," Conte said. ''I think you would lose that case."
The district attorney might be right, but the law is broad. It makes it a crime not just ''knowingly and intentionally" to ''furnish" alcohol to anyone under 21 but also to ''allow" an underage person to ''possess alcoholic beverages" on the premises. There is nothing stopping the Northborough police chief, Mark Leahy, from going into district court to have a clerk magistrate determine whether a complaint should be issued. At this point, that might be the only way to help bring the events of last October back to what they really are: a heart-rending case of young people making bad decisions.
