Mitt’s “Willie Horton?”

Is this the new Willie Horton?

The father of a Washington woman slaughtered along with her new husband –
allegedly at the hands of a convicted Bay State killer – said his daughter’s
accused murderer never should have been released from prison here.

“It’s because of stupidity in Massachusetts that my daughter is dead,” said
Darrel Slater, 55, who is preparing to bury his daughter, Beverly Mauck, 28, and
her husband Brian Mauck, 30.

The couple was executed in their home in rural Graham, Wash., Saturday after
an alleged argument with Daniel Tavares Jr., 41, who in 1991 pleaded guilty to
hacking his mother to death with a carving knife in their Somerset home in
served 16 years for that crime.

Tavares finished his sentence on June 14, but was immediately re-arrested on
a warrant charging him with two 

counts of assaulting Souza-Baranowski
Correctional Center prison guards during his troubled stint behind bars,
Department of Correction officials said.

Worcester prosecutors requested $50,000 cash bail for each of those charges,
an amount approved by Clinton District Court Judge Martha Brennan, according to
court documents.

But Tavares appealed the bail and on July 16, Superior Court Judge Kathe
Tuttman released him on personal recognizance. Tavares was freed and fled the
state to marry and live in a Washington trailer with Jennifer Lynn Tavares, who
met the convict at Walpole after answering an inmate personal ad. He defaulted
on a July 23 court date, prosecutors said.

“How does a guy who killed his mother, get charged with more crimes, get out
of jail? How can he leave the state?” an angry Slater said last night.

“That judge needs to get her head out of her (expletive). My little girl was
only 28. She was a newlywed. They just started their lives. This never should
have happened,” Slater said.

A bit more detail on the crime here.

While the disgusting stupidity of this Judge cannot be overstated, I mean the man hacked his mother to pieces then violently attacked a prison guard:

A spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early said prosecutors had wanted to keep Tavares behind bars last summer and argued for high bail because of the brutality of the alleged attacks on correction officers.

Correction officer Michael Kasprzak was allegedly punched in the head as he removed restraints from Tavares in December 2005. Two months later, the con allegedly spat on correction officer Matthew Atter and screeched, “I’m going to kill you (expletive) . . . I’ll break your (expletive) arms off!” according to court records.

“Obviously, we tried to keep him incarcerated,” said Worcester DA spokesman Tim Connolly.

Tavares also was disciplined by the DOC for writing a series of bizarre and threatening letters to his father, Daniel Tavares Sr. The elder Tavares complained about the letters to a DOC victim advocate, but they did not stop, he told the Herald yesterday.

But I think it’s a bit different then the Horton case.  Where Dukakis supported a program that released a killer, Romney instead worked within the restrictive Massachusets system to pick a judge, who then later released the killer.

The judge, a registered Democrat, apparently was nominated because of a outcry against Mitt from the NOW types who didn’t like the number of women he nominated to the bench:

Until yesterday, just 13 of Romney’s 43 recommendations for the judiciary were women, sparking criticism from groups that said he should appoint more. Recently, Romney has pushed to appoint more female and minority judges, and last month he put the spotlight on the Judicial Nominating Commission, the state panel that screens potential judges, for failing to forward more candidates to his office.

”The governor felt he wasn’t getting enough female and minority candidates,” said Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom. ”The governor is interested in making sure that appointments to the bench, to the extent possible, reflect the diversity of the community at large.”

If yesterday’s recommendations are approved by the Governor’s Council, 36 percent of his judicial appointments will have been women. That rate is less than the previous governor. Forty percent of Paul Cellucci’s appointments to the bench from 1997 to 2000 were women.

Romney nominated six women to the bench in 2005. He has recommended six so far this year, including the four put forward yesterday.

”That’s a step in the right direction,” said Pamela Berman, the former president of the Women’s Bar Association and a current partner at a Boston-based law firm. ”We’ve been actively trying to encourage women to apply. We hope he continues this trend.”

Tuttman, who has worked as an Essex County prosecutor since 1989, prosecuted Patrick S. McMullen, the Salisbury man convicted last year of raping, beating, and holding hostage his wife and six children for six years. She also prosecuted Eugene McCollom, who pleaded guilty last year to beheading a prostitute and burying her body parts on a Nahant beach.

That bolded part intrigued me so after looking into it I found that the Governor doesn’t find a nominee himself, no, instead a council finds some qualifying individuals and then shows them to the Governor who then gets to pick out of that group.

Judging from the article above it appears this woman was qualified and had done some good work on prosecuting scumbags. 

So instead I would blame put the blame where it belongs, with a system that allowed a man who chopped up a human being to only serve 16 years and then blame the judge who after looking at the guys history deemed it a-ok to let the guy out on his own recognizance after being involved in another violent crime.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin found this at the end of this article:

In one letter, Tavares wrote about receiving a college education behind bars
and learning seven languages.

He described his achievement this way:

“Only in Massachusetts.”

Indeed!

And Don Surber:

Massachusetts: The slow learner state.

Ouch!

Curt

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