Today’s post is a real story about limits – in life, professionally and personally. Before I say anything else, let me emphasize the obvious: I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I make my living, in part, by powerfully and aggressively defending clients who are accused of crimes. I fight to the end for my clients. Philosophically, I’ve always cherished the constitutional presumption of innocence in our country, and I believe that presumption should never be diminished in any way. All that being said, there are also times when I believe that if a defendant has committed multiple offenses for a specific act (such as drunk driving,) and has received multiple convictions or other findings tantamount to a guilty plea on those offenses, then he or she is arrested yet again for the same offense, the time comes when that person must own up to their problem, and pay the price that the courts have decreed is appropriate for that offense. As a Boston criminal defense lawyer, I can tell you that this type of situation is most often witnessed in OUI/alcohol and sex offenses.
Which brings us to today’s topic. Within the state senate in Massachusetts (a body not known for the sterling reputations of all who have been elected to it,) there is a certain state senator by the name of Anthony D. Galluccio, who stands out as a poster boy for the “Enough Is Enough” doctrine I referred to above. Galluccio, a Cambridge Democrat, has previous to today’s date been convicted twice of Massachusetts drunk driving/OUI charges. Subsequent to those convictions, in December 2005 he also caused a four-car accident in downtown Boston at 2:00 AM. Following that incident, a clerk-magistrate ruled that he had been drinking, but could not find sufficient evidence to legally support a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol. File that under “lucky break.”
Predictably, it gets worse: Just two months ago, in October, Gallucio was charged with leaving the scene of a car accident, in which he rear-ended a minivan carrying a family of four, resulting in a 13-year-old boy and his father suffering minor injuries. Just prior to that accident, a bartender in Cambridge, where Galluccio had been drinking, called Cambridge police to request that Galluccio be driven home, as the caller felt Galluccio was was too inebriated to drive. Notwithstanding, Galluccio refused to comment on whether he had been drinking before the October crash, telling reporters only that, “I cannot overstate how regretful I am,” and that, “I made a firm decision that there will be no alcohol in my life.” As a result of that incident, this past Friday, Galluccio, 42, was sentenced to six months of home confinement and to two years of supervised probation. He was required to avoid all alcohol use, and required to submit to random testing for alcohol use.