Patrick tried twice to aid parole bid
Candidate changes course on release of convicted rapist
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval L. Patrick, who has sought to downplay his advocacy on behalf of a convicted rapist serving a life sentence, wrote two letters to the Massachusetts Parole Board seeking his release and also corresponded with him in the late 1990s.
``He appears well prepared to make a positive re-entry and important contribution to the community of responsible citizens," Patrick wrote the Parole Board on behalf of Benjamin LaGuer, who was found guilty of tying up and raping a neighbor for eight hours in 1983.
The Parole Board turned down LaGuer, who returned to the board for a second time in April 2000. Patrick again wrote to the board, urging LaGuer's release. Again, LaGuer was turned down.
A quotation from one of Patrick's letters was removed from LaGuer's website in the last several days, after Patrick issued a statement suggesting he no longer supported the effort to free the convicted rapist. Patrick said he had reviewed the history of the case and concluded that ``justice has been served," in light of a 2002 DNA test that confirmed the prosecution 's case against LaGuer.
In the same statement, issued Thursday night, Patrick sought to minimize his ties to LaGuer: ``My sole involvement in this case was more than 10 years ago, when I wrote a letter on Mr. LaGuer's behalf."
At an event last week he told reporters: ``I know who he is. He is someone on whose behalf I wrote, I think, maybe 15 years ago."
His spokesman, Richard Chacon, told the Sentinel & Enterprise that Patrick's comments in support of LaGuer were made when Patrick was working as a lawyer at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the 1980s.
But letters obtained by the Globe indicate Patrick's involvement was more recent and more significant than he has suggested. He wrote the Parole Board in 1998 and again in 2000. He also wrote at least twice to LaGuer himself, addressing the notes ``Dear Ben."
``I am sorry not to have written sooner," Patrick, then a lawyer in private practice, wrote in a letter to LaGuer dated July 16, 1998. ``It's not that it wasn't `appropriate,' just the overwhelming press of other business. Given the significance of events in your life, I am embarrassed that I did not make the time."
On Aug. 5, 1998, and again on April 3, 2000, Patrick asked the Parole Board to set LaGuer free.
``I have never met Mr. LaGuer in person," wrote Patrick to the Parole Board. ``But, thanks to a lively exchange of correspondence over the years, I do feel I know him. I receive a crushing volume of mail, much of it from prisoners in facilities all over this country. None of it is as thoughtful, insightful, eloquent, or humane as that I receive from Mr. LaGuer. . . . I urge you and your colleagues on the Parole Board to act favorably on his application."
Patrick first wrote the Parole Board while he was a lawyer in private practice. The second time he contacted the board, he was working for Texaco.
Patrick is one of several politicians, lawyers, and academics who had embraced LaGuer's efforts to win his freedom, though some of the support dwindled after the 2002 DNA test. Among those who had supported LaGuer, according to his web site, are former Boston University president John Silber, who wrote the Parole Board on his behalf in 2003; State Senator Jarrett Barrios of Cambridge, State Senator Dianne Wilkerson of Roxbury, and Boston city councilors Felix Arroyo and Chuck Turner. The Globe obtained the letters from an archive at Northeastern University.
LaGuer has lost several appeals, but continues to proclaim his innocence. He is appealing to the Supreme Judicial Court, contending that the DNA samples were mishandled.
His next parole hearing is scheduled for 2008.
Patrick backed away from LaGuer after Mayor Dean J. Mazzarella of Leominster, who was a rookie police officer and one of the first to arrive at the scene of the rape, publicly raised concerns about Patrick's involvement with the LaGuer case.
Mazzarella said yesterday he wants to meet with Patrick to get assurances that if he is elected, Patrick will not release LaGuer, now 43 and confined in maximum security at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.
``If you were a victim and someone raped, bound, and gagged you to the point where you were tied up with a telephone cord and your skin swelled so much they had to cut the cord away, do you think you could forget that person's face ever?" Mazzarella said. ``Never. I want to make sure he's not going to pardon this guy. What he should say is this Ben LaGuer guy is a bad guy. I've found out the whole story. This is exactly what we don't want on the streets of this state or this country."
Yesterday, when asked about the letters obtained by the Globe, Chacon modified his description of when Patrick got involved in the case.
``Deval Patrick has already said that almost 10 years ago he wrote a letter on Mr. LaGuer's behalf," Chacon said. ``He was not alone in expressing concern about the case at the time."
``Deval felt strongly at the time -- and does so today -- that whenever issues of fairness are raised in our court system, they should be addressed in a serious manner," Chacon said.
Patrick is planning to meet with Mazzarella next week, Chacon said.
Tim O'Brien, Kerry Healey's campaign manager, called Patrick's involvement with LaGuer ``another example of where Deval Patrick is more concerned with the offender and less concerned with the victims."
At the time of LaGuer's sentencing, Judge Robert Mulkern of Worcester Superior Court called the crime ``one of the most vicious sexual assaults, particularly of a fragile and vulnerable person, that I have ever seen. By imposing this sentence, I hope to protect society."
Globe correspondent Michael Naughton contributed to this report.
(Clarification: A story in yesterday's City & Region section about convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer should have provided a more detailed description of the kinds of support LaGuer received from politicians. State Senator Jarrett Barrios in 2004 urged the State Police Crime Lab to investigate two questions involving evidence in the case. State Senator Dianne Wilkerson wrote the crime lab in 2004 to request the release of evidence in the case. City Councilors Felix Arroyo and Chuck Turner in 2004 supported a motion for a new trial for LaGuer.) 