Objectively (for non-political reasons) a horrible person. To quote myself:
My vote is more about how Martha Coakley is a truly evil - and I do not use the term lightly - person than anything else (although I do like Baker). Dorothy Rabinowitz provides a short summary of her 1990s-early 2000s reporting on the Fells Acres Day Care/Amirault family case here.
The long and short of it is that during the "Satanic ritual abuse"/hypnosis/"recovered memory" hysteria, in 1986, the Amirault family, proprietors of Fells Acres Day Care, were alleged by "recovered memory" specialists to have repeatedly sodomized children with assorted sharp household implements (healing the wounds with their supernatural Satanist powers), while in a "magic room" of the day care that didn't exist, while dressed in clown suits, while sacrificing animals.
The elderly matriarch, Violet, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison, as was her daughter Cheryl, while son Gerald was sentenced to 40. By the 1990s, thanks in large part to Rabinowitz's reporting, it was obvious to anyone that the Amiraults were innocent, including the Massachusetts Parole Board (which is one of the least lenient in the country). However, Coakley used her position as Middlesex District Attorney to prevent the Amiraults' release; Violet died in prison, while she managed to prevent Cheryl's release until 1999 and Gerald's until 2004, simply because Coakley thought it would be politically advantageous to her. (When Cheryl and Gerald were finally paroled, Coakley applied the condition that they be forbidden from speaking publicly about the case!)
This isn't a isolated incident, either, when Kenny Waters was proven not to have committed the murder he was accused of, Coakley fought tooth and nail to prevent his release. There was a movie made about the case, Conviction, starring Hillary Swank; suffice it to say that it, rightly, does not put Martha Coakley in a positive light. while this particular case may tickle a pet peeve or two of yours, you must remember that the stated purpose of any DA is to ruin as many people's lives as possible, in the highest profile manner that's possible. the repressed memory craze and Satanic flair do make this one particularly saucy, but the essentials are repeated all across the country, every single day.
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