Boston Criminal Attorney Blog

I’ve dedicated several posts to this subject, because the problem of school bullying and student violence has become so pervasive. It is a reflection of the violence and vulgarity that pervades our society, in everything from video games such as “Grand Theft Auto,” which is filled with sickening and gratuitous violence, to television and movies, to the ubiquitous (and often dangerous) internet.

This growing infection of violence and brutality is being witnessed, of course, in a new generation of school children who are among the most abusive and disrespectful in decades. I've seen this first-hand. The origins of this behavior have produced the very problem of bullying in our schools that led to the death of Charles Walker, as well as so many other bullying victims in other schools across this country. The numbers are frightening. Google “School Bullying Victims Committing Suicide,” and you’ll be shocked.

Some suggested solutions:

First and foremost, students need to be taught a centrally important point when facing this problem: There is strength in numbers. And that when you stand up for someone who is targeted for abuse, you stand up for yourself. In every classroom program teaching anti-bullying tactics, there should be the following lesson from the great German poet and pastor, Martin Niemoller. The poem speaks to the fatalism of inaction and apathy in the face of brutality. It is central to the human conscience, and it should be taught to children at an early age to inoculate children against inaction in the face of brutality. There can be no better place than schools and schoolyards in which to teach this:

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists. And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

This haunting truth may have been written in response to the large-scale atrocities of Hitler’s Germany, but its powerful message represents a microcosm of all social structures- whether nations or schoolyards. In our schools, students need to be taught that when they see abuse and don’t speak up or stand up for that victim, they create a greater likelihood that they themselves will one day be victimized – whether in a class room today, or in a board room 30 years from now. Students must know more than how to “spot” abuse and bullying. They need to be taught how to speak up and stand up for victims of violence, and there can be no more effective way to do this, than to form that “critical mass” of several students, who are no match for one bully, or a small group of bullies. This is a moral response to this problem; it is practical instruction, and it should be our first response to this problem. If this doesn’t work, we should proceed to enact criminal penalties for school-age children who violently bully others. As a Massachusetts criminal defense attorney, I’d like to think we can avoid resorting to charging schoolchildren with criminal offenses. Such would not be my first choice.

But it’s better than reading about an innocent young boy found by his mother hanging at the end of an electrical cord, because he was literally bullied to death – and none of his fellow students did anything about it.

In my previous post on this subject, I wrote of how an 11 year-old boy in Springfield, Massachusetts, Charles Joseph Walker-Hoover, killed himself last week after suffering repeated taunts and bullying at the hands of fellow students at the New Charter Leadership School in Springfield, Massachusetts. According to the boy’s mother, Sirdeaner L. Walker, Carl had reported to her that students regularly beat, taunted and threatened him because they believed he was gay – even though, according to Carl’s mother, he was not gay. In what regrettably no longer comes as a shock, several of the students who threatened and bullied Carl were not just boys, but girls also. It’s been reported that shortly before young Walker committed suicide, a female classmate threatened to kill him because he acted too feminine. Probably suspecting she wasn’t feminine enough, she directed her aggression at him. So much for the old saying, “Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.” Don’t buy it: Girls can be just as violent and just as vicious as any boy.

Investigations have been launched, and the expected denial by school officials of any wrongdoing, (in the form of negligence in the failure of school officials to aggressively respond to prior complaints by Carl’s mother), are all taking shape. People will wring their hands, shake their heads, and say “What a pity.” The media will report the story, and it will be over. Then what? What is to be done about this problem, to minimize the odds it will happen again? Why is it that we as adults feel entitled to be protected from assault and battery, violence and abuse, but when it happens in a schoolyard, it’s too often dismissed as “child’s play?” I’ve always suspected that as adults, we don’t want to aggressively address this problem with strong legislation providing criminal penalties for children, because there’s something about ourselves in this violent behavior, that we don’t like to see, or perhaps admit. There are more anti-bullying educational programs in our schools today than there were in previous generations, as there are more awareness programs about inappropriate sexual contact, and that is good. But we must now act to prevent an equally damaging type of abuse.

A new approach is required to effectively deal with this problem. First, in public and private schools seeking licensure by the state, there ought to exist mandatory educational programs not only about why bullying is bad, but how students should group together to stand up and protect students who are victims of bullying. It’s all well and good to teach students how to spot bullying, but then what? If students aren’t taught how to combat it, “recognizing” it is largely pointless: Reporting it afterward to teachers, while desirable, isn’t an effective response, for three reasons: 1) At that point, the bullying has already taken place; the victim of the bullying has already been harmed. 2) Teachers simply can’t be everywhere at all times, noticing every threatening gesture or assault that might take place; 3) Instruction on only “recognition” of bullying, doesn’t empower students to help stand up and help bullying victims when they are being assaulted. In fact, it almost makes the observer a secondary ‘victim’ – because he or she doesn’t know how to intercede.

It is in the nature of bullying that a perpetrator picks on a weaker person, who usually stands alone. If other students learn how to spot bullying but don’t know how to respond, what good is that – especially to the victim? The Boston Globe editorialized on this very point in its April 22 2009 edition, and it is apropos to quote here: Students need to be taught how to “form a critical mass of students who are willing to come to the aid of a targeted student and stand against their peers.” This is key. Bullies target weaker, isolated or unpopular students. If only one student stands up to a bully to defend a victim, that bully will probably dole out the same aggression to the rescuer. But no bully is going to stand up to an organized group of students who stand up to defend a victim. An important, added benefit of such group action, beyond the victim being aided, is that the rescuers will walk away with increased self confidence and self esteem, which they can carry with them as they move forward in life to face the certain challenges that lay ahead of them. Everyone benefits, and substantially.

How do we achieve this in our schools? I’ll address this in my next post

Something happened in our midst this past week; something that should strike at the core of every public school committee and private school system in Massachusetts, and which should resonate across the United States. It is something that should keep principals awake at night, and something that should keep teachers vigilant about each day in their classrooms. This time, the subject isn’t drugs, and it isn’t sex or teen pregnancy, as serious as those subjects are. It’s far more common, far more insidious, and tragically, far more “accepted,” or at least tolerated, by school systems across this country.

It’s bullying.

Yes, the cruel, vicious abuse that the youngest of human beings are capable of. Maybe that’s why society hasn’t addressed it adequately enough so far: We don’t like to admit that such cruelty and savagery can exist inside children, our children. But the human being, regardless of age, is capable of unspeakable cruelty, and oddly enough, the display of that cruelty can appear with far greater frequency when people are very young. (Who has not heard the phrase, “Children can be so cruel”?)

And so it was that this past week that a boy universally described as sweet and kind by all who really knew him, hanged himself after repeated instances of bullying at the New Leadership Charter School in Springfield Massachusetts, where he attended the sixth grade. Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover could apparently take no more. His mother, Sirdeaner L. Walker, found him hanging by an extension cord in their home. The reason: Apparently, Carl wasn’t “tough enough” for many of the kids at New Leadership Charter School. Reportedly, many found him to be overly feminine, and singled him out for bullying because they thought he was gay. This is despite the fact that, according to his mother, the boy did not identify himself as gay, and despite the fact that he played football, basketball and soccer. Carl reported repeated instances of taunting, beatings and threats to his mother, who in turn reported these to school administrators. This daily emotional abuse and ongoing physical assault and battery, must have been horrible for this young boy. Despite Carl’s mother reporting this abuse to school authorities, she has inferred that school administrators did not do much in response.

Neither this post, nor this issue in general, is about gay rights. It's about human rights. It’s about moral accountability. And it’s most centrally about why we don’t protect the most vulnerable among us - school kids - from the violence that we as adults want to be - and expect to be - protected from. And it’s about what we should do about it.

I’ll follow this up more in my next post.

In two previous posts on this subject, I wrote of how Middlesex County District Attorney Gerry Leone’s office has doggedly pursued a suspect in the unsolved murder of Dr. Linda Goudey, a Stoneham obstetrician who was found strangled to death in the trunk of her car in September of 1993. That suspect is one Richard Stryker, M.D., the former boyfriend of Dr. Goudey. While Stryker was always a prime suspect in Dr. Goudey’s death, authorities were never able to assemble enough evidence to formally charge Stryker with her murder. However, Dr. Goudey’s family, led by her mother Marguerite Rafuse, brought a civil case against Stryker, seeking to hold him civilly and financially responsible for the death of Dr. Goudey. (For a refresher on how that legal mechanism works, see my last post on this subject.) Goudey’s family won that civil case, and secured a $15 million judgment against Stryker.

In response, Stryker hatched a plot to escape that $15 million jury award. His plan centered on securing a new trial on that civil judgment by producing a “new” witness who would testify that Dr. Goudey was last seen alive on the night of her death with another man, not with Stryker. Stryker devised the alibi scheme with a patient and friend of his, Woburn handyman Richard Chambers and with another man, Craig Pizzano. If the plan worked, Stryker was to pay both men over $100,000.00. But Pizzano eventually cracked, and admitted his role in the plan to authorities. That led the whole plot to unravel, and Stryker was arrested and charged last July with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit perjury. After spending several weeks being held in jail, Chambers then also broke down and admitted his involvement in the scheme. In exchange for his cooperation in this case, Chambers will likely avoid prison time.

Based on the summation of these developments, Stryker today pleaded guilty to multiple counts of perjury, subornation of perjury, and conspiracy charges in connection with his attempt to escape the $15 million judgment the Rafuse family secured against him. He was sentenced by Middlesex Superior Court Judge Diane Kottmyer to four years and one day in State Prison followed by fours years’ probation. Conditions of his probation include that Stryker pay restitution to the family of Goudey for their costs associated with the motion for new trial, and refrain from contacting the victims or any of the witnesses in the case. Commenting on the sentencing, Middlesex County District Attorney Gerry Leone said, “We were presented with a very interesting and large ball of yarn. The result of our unraveling that ball of yarn, were Timothy Stryker’s pleas of guilty today.” “Tim Stryker orchestrated the most serious of frauds upon the court … and attempted to frustrate our criminal investigation into the murder of Dr. Goudey. Her family has had to live with the anguish of Linda’s death for more than 15 years.” Goudey’s mother Marguerite Rafuse, 80 years old now, issued a statement read aloud to the court. In the statement she said the perjury scheme was a “diabolical” plan, and called Stryker, “unfeeling, calculating, manipulative and abusive.” “I am sure part of the reason for the plan of lies was retaliation in anger against me for the civil judgment,” wrote Rafuse.

As part of the plea deal, Stryker is unable to benefit financially from the case in any way. Prior to his guilty plea today, Stryker also entered into an agreement with the Massachusetts Board of Medicine not to practice medicine in the Commonwealth in the future, according to Leone. But the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine could now revoke Stryker’s medical license altogether. Leone is continuing to investigate the murder of Goudey, and Stryker remains the prime suspect, he said. In the meantime, for the next four years at least, Stryker will remain a guest of the Massachusetts Department of Correction, in state prison.

While I’m a Massachusetts criminal defense attorney, my everyday practice goals revolve around securing a just outcome to any situation. As long as Stryker was provided due process and the opportunity for a fair trial, I have no problem at all seeing this man escorted off to a cell. My best wishes to the Rafuse family, and hopefully, this will bring some measure of justice for them.

File this under: “It Doesn’t Just Happen At Abu Ghraib”

The vast majority of Massachusetts Police Departments do a good job of enforcing the laws that the rest of us are required to obey, as well as observing the laws they are required to obey when it comes to arresting and detaining someone. Most don’t abuse persons who have been arrested and are being held in custody pending bail or arraignment. That being said, it’s not impossible that a few police officers or police departments can break the law, or cross ethical and moral lines when it comes to arrest and detention of criminal suspects.

So in that vein, imagine that you are arrested by a police officer, who seems to think his badge gives him the right to be abusive, verbally or physically. Maybe he or she is in a bad mood; maybe he or she doesn’t like the way you look. Imagine that the officer makes this clear to you through his or her attitude, and the next thing you know, you’re arrested for “disturbing the peace” and “resisting arrest”. At the police station, you’re forcefully stripped of your clothes, and thrown into a cell, naked, along with another prisoner who is clothed, and just so happens to be held for intent to murder. The justification that is given for this at the time, and later, is that you ‘were violent with the arresting officers and thought to be a suicide risk’. You are humiliated, frightened, and psychologically abused.

Sound like a movie at the multiplex? It happened not so long ago in the Lawrence Police Department, and the city of Lawrence is now being sued in U.S. District Court as a result. A Lawrence resident, one Juan A. Figueroa, 29, recently became Exhibit A at the center of this story. Figueroa says that on August 13 2006 he was arrested around 2:40 a.m. after he got a $20 parking ticket for parking the wrong way on Amesbury Street in Lawrence while waiting to pick up a cousin from a nightclub. Figueroa claims that when he complained to two police officers at the scene, Alberto Inostroza and Thadeus Czarnecki, about the parking ticket, they became physically abusive toward him, accused him of disturbing the peace, and arrested him.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston claims that Inostroza slammed Figueroa into the door of the police station and punched him several times in the face, bloodying his nose, according to the eight-page complaint. The complaint also alleges that Czarnecki choked Figueroa when he did not take his ring off for booking. The suit names officers Alberto Inostroza and Thadeus Czarnecki, along with the city of Lawrence as defendants. Figueroa suffered no permanent injuries but has blood on his nose in his mug shot, according to his lawyer, Howard Friedman, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

The officers then stripped Figueroa and placed him in a cell with a clothed detainee who had been charged with assault with intent to murder, according to the complaint. The officers claim this was necessary because Figueroa was “despondent and “suicidal”, and they feared he would use his clothing to possibly hang himself. According to Friedman, Figueroa was not despondent, and the officers' real goal was to teach him a lesson for allegedly resisting arrest. Friedman said the officers were instead thinking, "We'll punish him … by making him so humiliated and embarrassed that he'll be more respectful to the police." "I've never heard of anywhere else in the country where they would strip a prisoner naked and then place them in a cell with a clothed prisoner to prevent them from attempting suicide," Friedman said. "It would make a person feel embarrassed, humiliated, and vulnerable."

On a relevant and important note, one of the defendants, Inostroza, was previously disciplined by the Lawrence Police Department five times from 2002 to 2007, for misconduct ranging from using harsh and obscene language to insubordination, according to internal affairs records provided by Figueroa’s lawyer. The Lawrence Police Department confirmed that officer Inostroza had been previously disciplined but said he had never physically abused anyone. Figueroa’s lawyer Friedman said the two misdemeanor charges against Figueroa for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest were later dismissed.

I’ll be watching this case closely. Hopefully, a lot of people will.

Occasionally, I’m asked by other criminal defense lawyers if I have any hesitation writing about or publicly approving of “prosecution wins” – cases where the defendant was found guilty. As a Massachusetts criminal defense attormey, the answer is no, I don’t: I don’t at all believe that truly guilty persons, or persons who are proven to be an obvious threat to public safety, should not be incarcerated. I don’t want my safety, my wife’s safety, or the safety of those whom I care about, to be threatened by a clearly dangerous person who should inarguably be off the streets. What I do want, and what I firmly believe in, is due process and the right to be defended zealously in court, prior to any determination of guilt. But if someone has been proven to be an obvious and serious threat to public safety, I have no problem congratulating the prosecution on a conviction, and for putting a dangerous person behind bars.

So it’s in that vein, that I offer my recognition to the Bristol County District Attorney’s office, in the conviction earlier this week of one Corey Deen Saunders. Saunders, an especially twisted human being, is a previously convicted sex offender who raped a 6 year old boy in the New Bedford Free Public Library last year. Yes, that’s right – in a public library, just feet away from his mother, who was using a library computer. Saunders was sentenced yesterday to life in prison by a Massachusetts Superior Court judge who ruled that only a lengthy jail sentence could prevent Saunders from harming more children.

In his decision, Superior Court Judge Robert J. Kane wrote, "We now know that Saunders is not amenable to rehabilitation," adding that "the history of Saunders' constant abuse of children . . . and his insincerity silence any claims that Saunders will effectively control his sexual urges." He had been on probation for a previous conviction of trying to rape a 7-year-old, and was supposed to “stay away” from children. (How, exactly, a condition like that is supposed to be effectively policed, is still beyond me and many other legal experts. Electronic monitoring bracelets can presently only monitor where someone is, not what someone’s doing.) Saunders had been released from prison earlier after he served a four-year prison term, in spite of prosecutors' requests to keep him jailed, and in spite of their arguments that he was still a danger to children. He is presently serving a five-year prison sentence for violating probation for that earlier conviction. When that sentence is completed, Saunders will remain an esteemed guest of the Massachusetts state prison system for at least fifteen years, when he will be eligible for parole. The reason he will be eligible for parole: While he was sentenced to a life term, only certain crimes, such a Murder In the First Degree, exclude any possibility of parole.

Saunders had admitted to court psychologists a history of molesting boys while staying in foster homes and state programs. He had a disturbed childhood, psychologists said in the court records, and a low intelligence level. The mother of the 6-year-old boy who was victimized by Saunders in this case submitted a letter to the court yesterday saying, "Please understand that this man tried to take my son's innocence away," she said. "He is a danger to children in society," she said. "Not another child nor family should go through the pain that we have endured."

Amen to that.

Ten years ago this summer, a horrifying story came to pass on Cape Cod. It represented the penultimate fear of anyone whose car has ever broken down, and is seeking help. A young woman named Melissa Gosule was driving on Cape Cod in July 1999 near the Cape Cod Canal when her car broke down. She accepted a ride from a man named Michael Gentile - who apparently seemed unthreatening to her - and was never again seen alive. Eight days later, her body was found in a shallow grave. Gentile is serving a life sentence for the crime. As horrific as that story is, it gets worse: Gentile had been convicted of at least 20 previous violent crimes, and was walking free at the time he abducted and killed Ms. Gosule.

A legislative bill now dubbed “Melissa’s Bill", after Ms. Gosule, has now been introduced into the Massachusetts Legislature that that would create a "three strikes" form of punishment for habitual violent offenders. A similar bill was filed in previous legislative sessions, but lawmakers deemed the penalties too severe. Prosecutors supporting the present bill, and state Representative Brad Hill of Ipswich, who sponsored the bill, said the new version has been revised to make exceptions for nonviolent offenders, thus making passage more likely. Middlesex County District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. has taken the prosecutorial lead in promoting this bill, commenting that "This new version of 'Melissa's Bill,' while addressing previous concerns, is consistent with its mission to assure greater transparency, accountability, and truth in sentencing for dangerous repeat offenders." We have also closed additional legal loopholes that would have ensured that Melissa's murderer, whose 27 convictions resulted in a mere two years served in prison, would not have been free to abduct and kill Melissa."
Leone said the new bill requires that defendants who are convicted of a third felony in three separate offenses be punished with the maximum sentence allowed for the third crime, as opposed to a mandatory life sentence, as the previous bill called for. Another major problem with the prior iteration, was that misdemeanor offenses were counted in the “three strikes” language. In my professional opinion as a Massachusetts criminal defense attorney, that provision was overly-broad and too severe. The new bill applies only to those who have committed serious felonies; proponents also argue that this new iteration is fairer because it would not depend on judges' previous sentences, but rather on the specific crimes committed.

The bill would also put an end to what critics of the current sentencing system refer to as “package deals.” These current sentencing options permit defendants who commit new crimes to combine the charges and receive concurrent sentences for each crime. Under the new bill, sentences imposed on the new crimes would run consecutively. It would also prohibit probation for defendants who commit a new felony while free on a suspended sentence, and mandate that the defendant serve the suspended sentence after a finding of probable cause for the new crime.

The bill has been referred to the Legislature's Judiciary Committee. Heidi Gosule, Melissa's sister, who now serves as a prosecutor in Leone's office, said she hopes the changes will be enough for the bill to pass finally. In a written statement, Ms. Gosule said, "We are fighting for this bill in memory of my sister and other victims like her". "We are truly hopeful that this bill will pass in what is the 10th year since Melissa's death and assure that victims will be better protected for years to come." With the right legal and constitutional safeguards, I don’t think anyone can argue against that. I’m a Massachusetts criminal defense attorney, and I know I won’t.