Mass. Politician Gets Support at Corruption Sentencing

The Boston Globe reports:

Brushing aside pleas for mercy, a federal judge sentenced former state Senator Dianne Wilkerson yesterday to 3 1/2 years in prison for taking $23,500 in bribes, saying too many Massachusetts politicians engage in political corruption without fear of serious consequences.


US District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock agreed with Assistant US Attorney John T. McNeil, who argued that Massachusetts politics have become so cynical that two former House speakers convicted of federal crimes — Charles F. Flaherty and Thomas M. Finneran — were “welcomed back like they were some sort of heroes’’ at State House ceremonies on Wednesday. Neither Flaherty nor Finneran was sentenced to prison.

“It’s clear the sentencing imposed for criminal conduct here and, frankly, in other industrial states, hasn’t been sufficient,’’ said Woodlock. Referring to a culture of political corruption in Massachusetts, Woodlock said, “That Gordian knot has not been cut. People go back to do it again.’’

Woodlock acknowledged the service that Wilkerson, a state senator for 16 years and the first black woman elected to that chamber, had provided to the state. He noted that he had received more than 100 letters from her supporters, including ordinary citizens and former governor Michael S. Dukakis, for whom she served as an assistant legal counsel in the 1980s.

The "compassionate", "progressive" place known as Massachusetts.