Prison chief resolute on surgery
But says he won't quit if court backs inmate sex change
Like his immediate predecessor as head of the state's prison system, Harold W. Clarke said that allowing a convicted killer to have a state-funded sex-change operation is a bad idea that would increase the risk of the prisoner escaping while traveling for the surgery and could spur violence against the inmate afterward.
But Clarke parted company yesterday with the previous commissioner, Kathleen Dennehy, in one key respect: He will not quit if a federal court orders him to allow the operation.
"If the court decides that the offender should have sex-reassignment surgery, then it's incumbent upon the department to do what it must do legally," Clarke told US Chief District Judge Mark L. Wolf before the end of a two-day hearing into his views on Michelle Kosilek's suit seeking the operation.
Clarke told the Globe afterward that he would exhaust every possible legal appeal if Wolf ordered the procedure for Kosilek, who was born Robert Kosilek and has been diagnosed with a gender identity disorder by medical specialists.
Kosilek strangled his wife, Cheryl, in Mansfield in 1990, dumped her body in a car at the Emerald Square Mall in North Attleborough, and fled to New York, where he was arrested.
Clarke, who headed the prison systems in Washington state and Nebraska before taking over the Massachusetts system in November, said he had no intention of quitting over the dispute.
"This is a legal matter," he said. If the judiciary ultimately rules for Kosilek, "Who are we to defy the courts?" Clarke continued. "We're a law enforcement agency."
Frances Cohen, one of Kosilek's lawyers, said afterward that Clarke's position on that point was more reasonable than Dennehy's. But she told Wolf that Clarke's reasons for opposing the surgery were so similar to those of his predecessors that she felt he had not seriously considered the evidence on both sides.
That was not surprising, she said, given the political opposition the operation has stirred. After Clarke told reporters on April 1 that he planned to examine the case with a "fresh set of eyes," more than 40 state legislators wrote him to oppose the surgery, she said. Cohen said the prison system is violating Kosilek's constitutional rights barring cruel and unusual punishment by depriving her client of vital medical care.
"Ms. Kosilek is aging," Cohen said, nodding toward the 58-year-old prisoner. "Her mental anguish is only increasing."
Kosilek, who legally changed his name to Michelle in 1993, has waged a legal campaign for 15 years to undergo a sex change and has attempted suicide in prison. 