Democrat candidate blasts Plymouth County DA over child rapist’s pending release
By Marc Larocque
Enterprise Staff Writer
Posted Sep 27, 2018
Former prosecutor John Bradley held a press conference on Friday in front of Brockton District Court blaming his campaign opponent, incumbent Plymouth County DA Tim Cruz, for the release of a dangerous sex criminal, Weymouth child rapist Richard Gardner.
BROCKTON – Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz’s challenger is blasting the incumbent for “sheer incompetence” over a failure to keep a convicted Weymouth child rapist held in state custody on a civil commitment.
John Bradley, the Democratic candidate for Plymouth County district attorney, held a press conference in front of Brockton District Courthouse on Friday afternoon, speaking about a Supreme Judicial Court ruling issued a week ago, ordering the release of Richard Gardner, a convicted child rapist from Weymouth. The state’s highest court ruled that Gardner cannot be held under civil commitment as a danger to children – following a 28-year sentence for kidnapping and raping young boys in the 1980s – after Cruz’s office failed to file the proper petition when he was released from a Massachusetts prison in 2016.
Cruz tried to get the civil commitment about a year later when Gardner was in a Rhode Island prison, serving a one-year sentence for violating the terms of his parole, but the Supreme Judicial Court said no, ruling that it’s now beyond the jurisdiction of the Plymouth County DA.
“Richard Gardner will soon be getting out of jail and will be allowed to prey on young children in our communities because the district attorney’s office committed an inexcusable mistake by failing to file simple routine paperwork,” said Bradley, a former Plymouth County prosecutor, speaking during the press conference, railing against his Republican opponent and former boss. “And this is from a district attorney who likes to style himself as a protector of our communities and a protector of us. This is one example of a disturbing pattern of incompetence that does the exact opposite of protecting us.”
Cruz’s office contested Bradley’s claim in a statement that was released Friday afternoon by Beth Stone, Cruz’s spokeswoman.
“From the outset, our office has fought to protect the public and work to see that Mr. Gardner remained behind bars,” the statement said. “That included working with Weymouth Police, Quincy Police, Massachusetts Department of Probation and officials from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. We additionally asked our legislative delegation to adopt changes in the civil commitment process, which addressed reforms to the procedures established for the civil commitment of a Sexually Dangerous Person.”
The statement said the DA’s office hasn’t given up.
“We respect but are deeply disappointed by the court’s decision last week. We believe that our arguments were meritorious and correct. We have referred the court’s decision to the Attorney General’s Office who will now determine whether a cert petition should be filed asking the United States Supreme Court to accept the case for further appellate review,” the statement said. “Mr. Gardner is still in custody, and we await the Attorney General’s opinion on this case.”
“Over the 18-year period that I have been district attorney, the office has tirelessly sought justice on behalf of Plymouth County victims of crime. From 2001 through 2018, we have solved 85 percent of the homicides committed in the county. As chief law enforcement officer and in conjunction with Massachusetts State Police and local police departments, I remain committed to protecting the public safety of residents here in Plymouth County.”
Bradley called Gardner an “apex predator,” and the candidate pledged not to allow such a mistake to happen if he is elected on Nov. 6.
“When he was asked about it in the media, the incumbent DA described it as quote ‘human error.’ That’s simply a euphemism for prosecutorial incompetence,” Bradley said.
Bradley also slammed Cruz for his record of dismissing active first-degree murder trials, listing seven examples from a four-year period. Bradley was flanked by Lisa LeClair, who talked about how her son, Joshua LeClair, was killed in Brockton at age 21 in 2013, during an attempted robbery by a man named Linanel Brown-Madison, who was used as a cooperating witness in a murder case the previous year.
“If that office had upheld the law, that man, Linanel Brown-Madison, would be in jail and he would not have shot my son,” Lisa LeClair said. “So now my family is completely destroyed. I will never have another Thanksgiving with him, he will never have another Christmas, he will never have children, and my family is forever broken because they made a bad decision.”
Bradley claimed that he has never dismissed a first-degree murder case.
“I’ve been a prosecutor for 26 years. I’ve prosecuted cases at the highest levels and I have never ever dismissed a first-degree murder case,” Bradley said. “Seven murder cases in the period of four years, I would suggest, has got to be some type of record in Massachusetts. ... The sad part is once again these cases were dismissed because of prosecutorial ineptitude and malfeasance. As a result, we have seven people who were charged with murder who are now out and about in our communities.”
Related content
http://www.patriotledger.com/news/20180921/democrat-candidate-blasts-plymouth-county-da-over-child-rapists-pending-release
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