State Official Defends Mandatory Sentencing

Plymouth County District Attorney Michael Sullivan defended mandatory sentencing, the war on drugs and other Massachusetts crime policies in a discussion with summer school students at the Institute of Politics (IOP) Wednesday night.

"[Mandatory sentencing] is good because it's colorblind and it gives people confidence in the community," said Sullivan, who is also a former member of the state House of Representatives.

Several students in the audience of 15 criticized the laws--which set mandatory sentences for murder, driving under the influence and drug trafficking--as unfair to minorities and the disadvantaged.

But Sullivan said he favored more mandatory sentencing laws, and also said he supported the death penalty.

"I think there are some times that the public ought to have the right to consider execution as a punishment," he said.

And when asked how he could support prosecuting some children as adults when they have none of the rights associated with adulthood, Sullivan said he believed that when people commit adult crimes, they should be treated as an adult.

Sullivan began his talk by detailing the problems he encountered in his southeastern Massachusetts district when he was appointed by former governor William F. Weld '66 in 1995.

"Oftentimes victims and witnesses that came to court would get exasperated at the long delays before trial," Sullivan said.

By persuading the trial court to assign more judges to his district and transforming trailers into courtrooms, Sullivan said, they were able to reduce the average time between arraignment and trial from over a year to a matter of weeks.

The most poignant moment of Sullivan's talk came when a student asked him about the most difficult case on which he'd ever worked.

He spoke of the search for Melissa Gosule, a substitute teacher whose car broke down on Cape Cod. She accepted assistance and a ride from Michael Gentile, who was later arrested for her murder and convicted in May.

"You get to know the victims in murder cases after the fact," Sullivan said. "Your heart really breaks for [the family] because even if you're able to successfully prosecute the person, you think about the big whole in their life that they're going to have."