From Today's Globe:
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BRIAN MCGRORY
Waiting for leadership
Nineteen years, that's what Dennis Maher lost when Lowell police arrested him and the Middlesex district attorney prosecuted him for rapes he didn't commit.
When the jury convicted Maher in 1984, he was sent to Walpole State Prison, where an inmate with a razor and an attitude slashed him across the neck.
From there, Maher spent the better part of his 20s, 30s, and the first years of his 40s in the Massachusetts Treatment Center for sexually dangerous people.
In 2003, with pressure from the Innocence Project, DNA evidence exonerated Maher. In fact, the evidence shows that two of the three attacks weren't even committed by the same guy. He was set free after a five-minute court hearing so uneventful it could have been about a parking violation.
At the time of his release, Middlesex DA Martha Coakley, who inherited the case, said: "We have profound regrets about this. There is not much you can say to someone who has unfortunately been at the wrong end of an imperfect system."
The assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, J.W. Carney, now a defense lawyer, was even more direct. "I told him how very, very sorry I was for my role in this injustice, and I asked him to forgive me," he said.
Just about everyone of authority expressed public remorse, everyone, that is, except for Edward Davis. Yes, that Ed Davis, the one who's all over the front pages this week with his appointment as the next Boston police commissioner.
Regarding Dennis Maher, Davis has never expressed regret or remorse or just about anything at all.
In 1983, Davis was a Lowell detective investigating the scene of two of the attacks. One of the victims had reported that the assailant wore a green Army jacket over a red hooded sweatshirt. As Davis was on the street, he saw Maher walking across the square in a red hooded sweatshirt. He found a green Army jacket and an Army knife in Maher's car that night. Maher was a soldier, without any police record, stationed at Fort Devens.
The rest was a rush to judgment, filled with what a lawsuit filed by Maher in federal court against Davis, his city, and his Police Department describes as bungled identifications, fudged chronologies by detectives, and a blatant failure by Davis to check out Maher's alibi.
No one asked Davis about the Maher case at his feel-good press conference yesterday. Afterward, I followed Davis into an anteroom in City Hall and asked if he would finally express regret.
"Certainly, if Dennis Maher is innocent, it's a great tragedy," Davis replied. "But there's litigation on it, so I can't say much. It was pre-DNA, and we presented the best case we had."
If Maher is innocent? If? Let's get something straight: There are no ifs, no ands, no buts about it. Maher is an innocent man. It is nothing short of bizarre that Davis won't acknowledge that.
Later, Davis called to "amend" his remark. "Anyone who goes to jail wrongly, it's a tragedy. But I'm limited in this conversation by the pending litigation."
Maher is a mechanic at
A single mistake a quarter century ago probably doesn't disqualify Davis from being police commissioner of Boston, though it is curious that a department plagued by wrongful convictions is about to be led by a commissioner involved in a very wrongful conviction.
Worse, though, is Davis's inability to confront it, to simply say he deeply regrets that an innocent man went to prison because of his work. I understand about the constraints of lawsuits. I believe Davis comes here with enormous potential and a street-tested policing philosophy. But he has to know the right thing to do is to urge all parties involved to quickly make things right for Maher.
That would be a sign of leadership, and what Boston needs right now, the department and the city, is a great leader -- no ifs involved.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
