{"id":354,"date":"2002-09-18T01:13:29","date_gmt":"2002-09-18T06:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=354"},"modified":"2002-09-18T01:13:29","modified_gmt":"2002-09-18T06:13:29","slug":"judicially-cognizable-rape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=354","title":{"rendered":"judicially cognizable rape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.masslaw.com\/mlwnews073102.cfm\">Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div>\nJames J. Kelly, 73, of Leominster, received a myriad of appeals and stays for a pair of 10-year sentences for rape and a five-year sentence for indecent assault and battery.&nbsp;  He was convicted in 1988 in Worcester Superior Court in connection with the rape of a former Leominster woman, Debra Hagen, three years before.&nbsp;  Following his conviction, Kelly collapsed and was hospitalized and his first sentencing was put off.&nbsp;  An unusual cycle or events including lost court transcripts, new appeals, stays and continuances resulted in Kelly&#8217;s freedom. <\/div>\n<p>Supreme Court Justice Robert Cordy, in his majority opinion for the court, went on to chastise the Worcester County District Attorney&#8217;s office for the lack of action in getting Kelly behind bars.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Justice Cordy further wrote that &#8220;the victim of a crime does not have a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution of another.&#8221;&nbsp; Heaven help every victim of crime in Worcester County.&nbsp; They must not only forfeit to the District Attorney&#8217;s office any interest in the prosecution of the crime against them&#151;which is nothing new at law but still is somewhat counterintuitive.&nbsp; Further, they must entrust their grievance will be adequately redressed by the 26 year-old political machine that is Worcester County District Attorney John Conte&#8217;s office, a machine of dubious integrity and flagrant incompetence.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Somebody obviously thinks that James Kelly should not do time for rape.&nbsp; Since District Attorney John Conte is the only person responsible for making sure that the sentence against this convicted rapist gets carried-out, and since Conte has failed in that regard for over fourteen years (Kelly was convicted in 1988), then I think an appropriate punishment for his obstruction of justice would be if Conte and Kelly went to prison together.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>They probably have a lot in common.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly: James J. Kelly, 73, of Leominster, received a myriad of appeals and stays for a pair of 10-year sentences for rape and a five-year sentence for indecent assault and battery.&nbsp; He was convicted in 1988 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=354\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[696,691,695,692,690,698,693,699,694,697,701,700],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-county-district-attorney","tag-debra-hagen","tag-district-attorney","tag-james-j-kelly","tag-john-conte","tag-massachusetts-lawyers-weekly","tag-robert-cordy","tag-supreme-court-justice","tag-worcester-county","tag-worcester-county-district-attorney","tag-worcester-county-district-attorneys-office","tag-worcester-superior-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}