Twenty months after he put a career prosecutor on the Massachusetts Superior Court bench, confident in her law-and-order credentials, Mitt Romney called yesterday for the judge to resign because she released without bail a convicted killer who went on to allegedly kill again.
Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman, said yesterday that Judge Kathe M. Tuttman should never have freed Daniel T. Tavares Jr. on personal recognizance in July, after he was charged with assaulting two prison guards. Tavares, 41, was near the end of a 16-year sentence for stabbing his mother to death in 1991 and had threatened in a letter - intercepted by prison officials in February 2006 - to kill Romney and other state officials, Fehrnstrom said.
On Monday, after five months in hiding, Tavares was arrested for allegedly shooting to death Brian Mauck, 30, and Beverly Mauck, 28, newlyweds who lived near him in a rural area south of Tacoma, police said.
Romney is now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, touting his record as governor. Some of his female supporters have highlighted his record of appointing women to the judiciary.
"There was a system-wide failure in this case starting with the judge," Fehrnstrom said in a statement yesterday. "Her decision represented an inexplicable lapse in judgment and was inexcusable. Unless there are facts unknown to us, Governor Romney believes Judge Tuttman should resign."
Tuttman has not spoken about the case; she was not available for comment at her home yesterday.
When Romney appointed her in April 2006, he was under pressure to put more women on the bench. A registered Democrat, she had worked since 1989 as a prosecutor in Essex County, where she was director of the family crimes and sexual assault unit.
During Tuttman's confirmation hearing, several members of the Governor's Council criticized Romney for nominating another prosecutor, saying he was overlooking qualified defense lawyers. But several witnesses urged the council to confirm Tuttman. The council confirmed Tuttman by a 7-0 vote.
"Tuttman's entire experience as a prosecutor suggested that she would be a law-and-order judge," Fehrnstrom said by phone yesterday. "Otherwise, she never would have been appointed."
Tavares was three days away from his release date on his sentence for killing his mother when he appeared before Tuttman on June 11, charged with assaulting correction officers, said his lawyer, Eugene Lumelsky of Lawrence. Prosecutors asked Tuttman to hold the convict on $50,000 bail for each of the two charges, and Lumelsky requested about $5,000 bail, he said. In July, Tuttman released Tavares on his own personal recognizance.
"I'm stumped," Lumelsky said yesterday of Tuttman's decision.
Tavares fled and turned up next in Washington, where he lived with a woman he had met online while behind bars. The Massachusetts State Police suspected that Tavares was in Washington state and warned Romney to be on the lookout for Tavares when he campaigned in Seattle on Monday, Fehrnstrom said. About the same time, Tavares was arrested on charges of killing the Maucks.
"Daniel Tavares is a monster and he never should have been let out of jail," Fehrnstrom said. "The whole case leads to some very troubling questions about a system that would let a man with his violent record back into society."
Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.
