Fri 6 July 2001-- The MA Board of Pardons released a unanimous 5-0 recommendation, signed Tuesday 3 Jul, that Gerald Amirault be pardoned. The official grounds were that his 30-40 year sentence was grossly disproportionate to the eight years the prosecution had accepted for Cheryl Amirault LeFave on similar charges and evidence.
Two board members (Maureen E. Walsh and Chairman Michael Pomarole) limited their concurrence to the disproportionality argument, declining to challenge the "lawfulness" of Gerald's conviction.
A majority of three (John P. Kivlan, Daniel M. Dewey, and Robert Murphy) went on, however, to suggest the likelihood of a miscarriage of justice (the real reason why this notoriously tough law-and-order board took up this case):
"Even the office of the district attorney has acknowledged that flawed interviewing procedures were employed" to question the children, three board members wrote. By all accounts, the members continued, the case "contained relatively little in the way of physical evidence to corroborate in some instances extraordinary, if not bizarre, allegations.
"These and like flaws in the investigative procedures in similar cases elsewhere in the nation have since led to the discrediting of some of those convictions."
The three parole board members ... asked Swift to review the "entire record" of the case.
Misc. notes:
The long 9-month wait for the Board's decision may have been to Gerald's advantage. This spring the Governor's Council refused to reappoint the 7th board member, Mary Ellen Doyle, notoriously hostile to defendants. By waiting for her departure, the 3 board members most confident of Gerald's innocence were able to muster a more convincing unanimous vote on his behalf.
The sixth board member Doris A. Dottridge abstained.