Samizdat

"I think inherently you can't investigate yourself...you can't be objective.
"I think that might be a glitch in the system." 
Col. Mark F. Delaney, Superintendent, Massachusetts State Police

By Jeff Blanchard

Massachusetts had about 2,600 serious police cruiser crashes, 500 in which a trooper could have been punished as the responsible party, but for "a glitch in the system."

T

hat was the state's top cop, quoted in a recent story on how, when state troopers smash up their cruisers, they often get to investigate themselves... and how, over a three-year period, Massachusetts had about 2,600 serious cruiser crashes, 500 in which a trooper could have been punished as the responsible party, but for "a glitch in the system."

But is "glitch" the right word for it? Or is this business of self-policing more typical of a larger problem in which our system of checks and balances has broken down and needs emergency roadside assistance?

A Fish Stinks from the Head Down

On Cape Cod, where the first thing you learn is that a Fish Stinks from the Head Down, it is often argued that the Bar of Acceptable Behavior for a Public Official was set on Martha's Vineyard one night in 1969, when our senior senator got liquored up and left a woman to drown upside down and gasping for air in his mother's submerged Oldsmobile.

In any event, where some see a glitch, others see a system in which self-policing is the norm, just the way things are with criminal justice in America today.

Here on Cape Cod, for example, District Attorney Michael O'Keefe:

• Is heading the investigation(s) into a series of break-ins at his house at the Ridge Club in Sandwich, the first last December, then another in recent months...without results, so far...thus, no word on the whereabouts of the district attorney's missing guns, or even what kind of guns they are, and whether the public should be helping law enforcement in looking for anything specific, or loaded.

Now, it could be argued that the state police are conducting the investigation, or the Sandwich police are conducting the investigation, or the Sandwich police officer who runs the security for the gated golf community is conducting an investigation, but they all answer to one man, the presumptive owner of the missing guns. Is that a glitch?

• Conducted the investigation that cleared Ann Gryboski in the self-confessed shooting death of her husband, Patrick Lancaster, on Easter Sunday, despite that O'Keefe and Gryboski were neighbors and immediately after the shooting he declared her a victim of mitigating circumstances.

Now, it could be argued that she did face a grand jury, but of the 27 people called to testify, none were among that group of immediate neighbors who wished they had been. As for Gryboski, she surrendered her medical license after the shooting and has yet to have it reinstated by the state medical board in the eight months since. Is there a glitch here?

• Prosecuted the Christa Worthington murder case, despite having made prejudicial and widely-publicized pre-trial comments about the victim to Maria Flook, a Truro local who was writing a book on the subject, Invisible Eden, a blend of pulp fiction and hard-boiled hallucination. Highlights included a passage where Flook arrives at O'Keefe's house (the old one near Gryboski, not the new one at the Ridge Club) just in that interval of time between his outdoor shower and his splash of cologne, the two of them soon off to cocktails at the Sons of Italy, not a glitch in sight.

Now, it could be argued that Christopher McCowen deserves to be in jail, but our faith in that fact would be a lot stronger if the case had not been brought by a guy who would characterize the victim as a slut in a book published before the trial...who was not sidelined by his comments, but allowed to build a murder/rape case with no murder weapon and no evidence of rape, on a Million Little Lies told by the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, on DNA that proved nothing of guilt, with a medical examiner who could not continue (for medical reasons), in front of a judge who could not continue (golf cart accident), in front of a juror who could not continue (cell phone call during deliberations), on the basis of a six-hour interrogation that was not recorded, but packaged and distributed as a 27-page confession by a state trooper). Oh, and the courtroom arguments were handled by an assistant district attorney who would no longer continue, either (and instead joined the family business as a third-generation judge).

• Prosecuted the Jonathan Wessner murder case that sent Paul Nolin to jail for the crime but resulted in no charges against Nolin's boss and alleged lover, a Catholic priest named Bernard Kelly, who once worked at the Kennedy family's church in Hyannis, St. Francis Xavier, along with the priest who got Nolin sprung from jail years earlier, Donald Turlick. During the course of the investigation, it was revealed that Kelly had stolen $1.5 million from various churches within the Fall River diocese, but instead of following his friend and church handyman to jail, Kelly was allowed to make amends and flee Cape Cod. Where'd he get the $1.5 million to pay back the church? By selling his Cummaquid estate, complete with horse stables and a swimming pool, to the Humane Society of the United States. By contrast, a Catholic priest in Darien, CT., recently was convicted of stealing the same amount of money for the same purposes in the same manner, and he got jail.

• Decided this week after a public outcry for justice that state police should investigate the fuzzy videotape case concerning John Reine, a Falmouth man accused of slashing someone's tires. Surveillance video that allegedly captured the scene was not introduced as evidence because of some malfunction that occurred while the video was either in possession of the district attorney's office or defense counsel, it has yet to be determined conclusively. Asked by a reporter whether he would call in a special counsel to review the matter, O'Keefe told the paper he would not "because it doesn't come close to rising to the level of a circumstance where that would be appropriate."

Just another glitch, that's all.