MA.- Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley finds fault with a judge who does not always believe police testimony.
Judge Raymond G. Dougan Jr. may be the most lenient judge in Boston, a prosecutor’s nightmare whose decisions are appealed by district attorneys far more often than any other judge in the Boston Municipal Court system, court records show. Appeals courts overturn his decisions the most, too, more than once including stern warnings that he should follow the law instead of his personal feelings. The 20-year-veteran judge’s reputation is so well established that one defendant predicted to police that he would go free after he went before “Judge Let Me Go’’ Dougan, according to the police report.
A Globe review of scores of cases decided by Dougan reveals a pattern of rejecting police testimony while extending second chances to criminals whose rap sheets go on for pages.
His approach sometimes backfires. Lemon, for instance, did not show up for the alcohol treatment Dougan ordered. Likewise, Dougan released a career criminal named Eric French after he was convicted of breaking into Locke-Ober restaurant in 2009, ruling that the 18 days he served awaiting trial was punishment enough. Ten weeks later, French was arrested for breaking into Locke-Ober again. This time, another judge sentenced him to 18 months in jail.
After years of frustration, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley is mounting an extraordinary campaign to remove Dougan from criminal trials altogether. Each day when the bushy-haired, bearded Dougan takes the bench in the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse, an assistant district attorney asks him to withdraw from the case on the grounds that he cannot be fair, and each time Dougan refuses. Meanwhile, Conley is asking the Supreme Judicial Court to bar Dougan from hearing cases involving the Suffolk district attorney.
Conley has also taken the rare step of filing a complaint against Dougan with the Judicial Conduct Commission, the same panel whose lengthy investigation prompted Judge Maria Lopez to resign in 2003. At the request of the commission, which does much of its work in secret, the SJC has already appointed a special counsel, longtime government corruption investigator J. William Codinha, to investigate the bias complaints against Dougan.
Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/04/17/boston_judge_known_for_leniency_faces_complaint/?page=1