As prosecutor, Patrick rarely in court
Record counters hands-on claim
As Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey stepped up her assertion this fall that Deval L . Patrick is soft on crime, Patrick has increasingly described himself as a former prosecutor who has personally put criminals behind bars.
"I've had the experience of sending people to jail," the Democratic gubernatorial candidate said during a press conference Oct. 14. "No, I'm not a criminologist, but I have been in the crucible, breaking a sweat."
"I am the only candidate in this race who has ever actually sent anyone to prison," he said at an Oct. 15 rally on Boston Common.
Patrick has also described Healey as "someone who has never seen the inside of a courtroom."
But Patrick has rarely, if ever, appeared in court as a prosecutor, a Globe review of his record shows.
As assistant attorney general in charge of the US Justice Department's Civil Rights Division from 1994 to 1997, Patrick oversaw a staff of prosecutors, who tried cases around the country, involving violations of federal antidiscrimination laws. He was required to sign off on grand jury investigations and made decisions on several high-profile cases.
But he was more an administrator and policy maker than someone who appeared in court to send defendants to jail, the record shows.
The Civil Rights Division's criminal section worked on dozens of cases around the country, including several church-burning cases he now touts on the campaign trail. But Patrick did not appear in court on any of them, the records show.
Responding to a Globe request, Patrick's campaign named one case that Patrick argued in court. It was a civil suit challenging a lower court's approval of a Louisiana voter redistricting plan that included no black majority districts. He argued that case in December 1996, a month before he left the Justice Department. Campaign officials said Patrick appeared in court for other appellate cases, but the officials were unable to identify them.
Campaign officials and some prosecutors who worked with Patrick insist that it is appropriate for him to describe himself as a prosecutor who put criminals behind bars, even if he did not personally try a case.
"He has sent people to jail," said Doug Rubin, a top Patrick campaign adviser. "He signed off on charges and sentencing recommendations. He had to sign off on every one of these cases. It's grossly unfair to say he didn't put people in jail. Clearly he did."
Patrick, who began running for governor about 18 months ago, did not usually describe himself as a former prosecutor in the early stretch of his campaign, according to public comments and speeches. He most often referred to himself as having held the top civil rights position" in President Clinton's Justice Department.
His resume in 1999 offered the following summary of those years: "Led the federal agency primarily responsible for enforcing federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, or disability. Supervised litigation at all levels of the federal courts; developed and consulted on policy with the President, the Vice President, the Attorney General and other Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officers, as well as members of Congress; and managed a staff of 550 employees and an annual budget of $65 million."
In an interview, Janet Reno, the former US attorney general and Patrick's former boss, said he "made all the hard decisions a prosecutor has to make."
"I trusted him as the Civil Rights Division chief," Reno said. "I was pleased with what he did."
She said he was "very much involved" in the prosecution of Paul Hill, who shot and killed a doctor who ran an abortion clinic in Florida. "We made prosecutorial decisions based on his weighing of the evidence, his assessment of the case; that's what prosecution is all about," said Reno, who is now working with the Innocence Project.
Donald Stern, who was the US attorney in Boston when Patrick served in Washington, said that trying cases would have been a poor use of his time. "His job -- and he did it very well -- was to set the priorities of the office, get prosecutors and law enforcement personnel at all levels to work together, and to make the difficult decisions which result in people being sent to prison," Stern said.
But other former prosecutors say they view a prosecutor as someone who bring charges against criminals in court.
"Deval Patrick is, by all accounts, a heck of a corporate lawyer and even a skilled defense attorney," said Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald Jr., a Republican and former Plymouth assistant district attorney. "But it's a stretch to say he's ever prosecuted a criminal case in his life."
"There is a difference in people's minds between a paper-pushing prosecutor and a real courtroom prosecutor," said Thomas Hoopes, a former assistant district attorney in Middlesex and a lawyer in private practice. "Within the trade, so to speak, there are people who are administrators and those who are courtroom prosecutors. There is a level of respect among the trade, among those who do it for a living, for someone's courtroom skills. But there are political skills that put you in a position to be the chief administrator of a prosecuting office. They always rely on experienced courtroom prosecutors, people who have the judgment and experience to understand how real courtrooms function on a day-to-day basis."
Patrick has frequently said he led the biggest federal criminal investigation before the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the investigation into church arsons in the South in the mid-1990s. He served as cochairman of the National Church Arson Task Force, established in June 1996, six months before he left government service.
Of dozens of church burning prosecutions, 10 involved federal charges, according to a review of the cases.
Donnie A. Carter, who ran the Arson Task Force, said Patrick was heavily involved in the investigation, one of several federal officials who met weekly to review cases.
"He was directly responsible for strategy and working out the prosecution, how we would work the cases," said Carter, now retired from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives . "This was participation at its best."
He said cases were brought in state rather than federal court whenever possible, as long as a state conviction would yield as lengthy a sentence as a federal one.
Even so, he said, federal prosecutors helped put together the cases.
Another former federal prosecutor, Michael Gennaco, said Patrick was deeply involved in a number of cases, including one that involved a defendant who trafficked in female sex slaves. 