Reporter's Notebook: A tale of two Dianne Wilkersons
By Gintautas Dumcius
News Editor
Nov. 24, 2010
To her supporters and defense attorneys, former state Sen.
Dianne Wilkerson was a voice for some of the state’s neediest
and least powerful people, as well as a “flawed being, who
made terrible mistakes.” According to federal prosecutors, the
Roxbury Democrat was a politician who acted as if she was
above the law, learned nothing from her past conviction, and
broke laws from the outset of her political career.
A U.S. District Court judge will have to decide which version
of Wilkerson is closest to the truth as he weighs what
punishment is appropriate. Wilkerson, who was caught on a
surveillance camera stuffing cash into her bra at a local Beacon
Hill eatery, pleaded guilty to corruption and bribery charges
earlier this year. Prosecutors are pushing for four years in jail
— two months more than the sentencing guidelines — saying
it’s necessary to “reflect the defendant’s crime and to promote
respect for the law.”
In a court filing last week, prosecutor John McNeil summed
up the charges against her thusly: “Wilkerson engaged in an
extraordinary range of official acts in an abuse of her public
office – she introduced legislation, delayed the passage of
legislation, placed holds on unrelated legislation to advance her
interests, lobbied the Senate President and Senate colleagues,
lobbied members of the House, pressured local officials
including the City Council President, the Mayor, the Chairman
of the [Boston Licensing Board], and called in a personal favor
from a wealthy private businessman who had business before
the state. Her corruption was both systematic and pervasive.”
McNeil said Wilkerson committed campaign law violations
between 2000 and 2007, and between 2003 and 2004, solicited
and collected over $100,000 from wealthy individuals and local
community members to help her pay off the tax debt she
incurred in connection with tax violations.
“Remarkably, her unlawful solicitation of funds also resulted in
a net profit to her,” McNeil wrote. Her records show that she
spent over $20,000 on furniture, paying a credit card bill,
paying her mortgage and providing money to her adult children
through the excess funds, he added.
More recently, Wilkerson settled her second campaign finance
violation case with the state attorney general in 2008. McNeil
said that “starting shortly after her loss of the Democratic
primary in September 2008, Wilkerson commenced a sticker
campaign which was to be funded entirely with illegal
contributions.”
She was arrested in Oct. 2008, and after pressure from her
Senate colleagues, resigned from the Second Suffolk District
post she had held since 1993.
Wilkerson’s attorneys, Max Stern and Charles Ogletree, are
arguing in their own documents filed Friday that the
prosecutors’ recommendation is based on inaccurate and
overblown facts. Supplemented by dozens of letters of support
from former Gov. Michael Dukakis, local ministers, Patrick
administration official Ronald Marlow, former Dorchester state
Rep. Charlotte Golar Richie, UMass-Boston Chancellor Keith
Motley, former staffers, friends and family praising Wilkerson,
her attorneys are pushing for a “considerably” lower sentence,
saying she has “fully accepted responsibility” for the crimes.
“Indeed, she has never stated or implied anything to the
contrary from the outset of this prosecution,” the two
attorneys wrote, saying she resigned after the indictment and
has agreed to be disbarred as a lawyer. She was “never
motivated by a desire to enrich herself, and she never did,”
they said, adding that she currently doesn’t own any property,
has no pension, savings, life insurance. She has been
unemployed since she resigned, they wrote, and ineligible for
unemployment compensation and Social Security.
The only asset she has is $64,000 in retirement contributions
she made as a state senator, but she handed $23,500 of that
over to the feds to repay them for the bribes in the same
amount that were captured on audio and video tapes, they
added. The rest of the money, with the exception of funds
needed for her “bare subsistence,” will be used to make further
payments owed to the IRS, they said.
She lived a “modest” life style and when she was arrested in
October 2008, she didn’t own a car or real estate, and had
only vacationed twice in 15 years, they said. “She has saved
the homes, jobs, and lives of people too numerous to count,”
they added.
She is also currently “the only caretaker for her 75-year-old
mentally ill mother,” they said.
Her attorneys also accused the FBI of a “constant
investigation, including the creation of a growing file, over and
over looking into her connections to numerous persons and
organizations, investigating her son, her travel, her legislative
filings, and repeatedly reviewing and collecting the records of
the State Ethics Commission and Office of Campaign Finance
with respect to her.”
Her attorneys maintained that she had clearance from the State
Ethics Commission for accepting some of the money before
the indictment because of her tax troubles. “But as these
benefits extended beyond her tax crisis, it became
extraordinarily poor judgment for her to continue to accept
them,” they wrote. “She blinded herself to the fact that the
persons offering were in fact expecting something in return,
and that these expectations could very well implicate her
official duties.”
They added, “Her fundamental error was a belief that if she
could posit an independent and good motive for doing
something, this negated the fact that someone was also giving
her something for it. Thus, she was readymade for the
government sting operation which, at every point, was targeted
to a cause it knew she would readily embrace – participation of
black/latino businessmen in economic development in the
minority community.”
Many of the letters of support sought to downplay the charges
and emphasize her political work. “I am not a psychologist,
and I can’t explain what happened to her to cause her to lose
the strong ethical roots that she brought with her into my
office,” wrote Dukakis, who hired Wilkerson as an assistant
legal counsel in his administration. “I do know, however, that
on the tough issues that test people in legislative office, she
invariably came down on the side of the public interest, at least
as I saw it, and did everything she could to stand up for those
who are often without representation in the halls of
government.”
The next court date in the case is Nov. 29 at 3 p.m. at the
Moakley Courthouse.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Check out updates to Boston’s political
scene at The Lit Drop, located at dotnews.com/litdrop.
More articles are available at the Reporter's website.
By Gintautas Dumcius
News Editor
Nov. 24, 2010
To her supporters and defense attorneys, former state Sen.
Dianne Wilkerson was a voice for some of the state’s neediest
and least powerful people, as well as a “flawed being, who
made terrible mistakes.” According to federal prosecutors, the
Roxbury Democrat was a politician who acted as if she was
above the law, learned nothing from her past conviction, and
broke laws from the outset of her political career.
A U.S. District Court judge will have to decide which version
of Wilkerson is closest to the truth as he weighs what
punishment is appropriate. Wilkerson, who was caught on a
surveillance camera stuffing cash into her bra at a local Beacon
Hill eatery, pleaded guilty to corruption and bribery charges
earlier this year. Prosecutors are pushing for four years in jail
— two months more than the sentencing guidelines — saying
it’s necessary to “reflect the defendant’s crime and to promote
respect for the law.”
In a court filing last week, prosecutor John McNeil summed
up the charges against her thusly: “Wilkerson engaged in an
extraordinary range of official acts in an abuse of her public
office – she introduced legislation, delayed the passage of
legislation, placed holds on unrelated legislation to advance her
interests, lobbied the Senate President and Senate colleagues,
lobbied members of the House, pressured local officials
including the City Council President, the Mayor, the Chairman
of the [Boston Licensing Board], and called in a personal favor
from a wealthy private businessman who had business before
the state. Her corruption was both systematic and pervasive.”
McNeil said Wilkerson committed campaign law violations
between 2000 and 2007, and between 2003 and 2004, solicited
and collected over $100,000 from wealthy individuals and local
community members to help her pay off the tax debt she
incurred in connection with tax violations.
“Remarkably, her unlawful solicitation of funds also resulted in
a net profit to her,” McNeil wrote. Her records show that she
spent over $20,000 on furniture, paying a credit card bill,
paying her mortgage and providing money to her adult children
through the excess funds, he added.
More recently, Wilkerson settled her second campaign finance
violation case with the state attorney general in 2008. McNeil
said that “starting shortly after her loss of the Democratic
primary in September 2008, Wilkerson commenced a sticker
campaign which was to be funded entirely with illegal
contributions.”
She was arrested in Oct. 2008, and after pressure from her
Senate colleagues, resigned from the Second Suffolk District
post she had held since 1993.
Wilkerson’s attorneys, Max Stern and Charles Ogletree, are
arguing in their own documents filed Friday that the
prosecutors’ recommendation is based on inaccurate and
overblown facts. Supplemented by dozens of letters of support
from former Gov. Michael Dukakis, local ministers, Patrick
administration official Ronald Marlow, former Dorchester state
Rep. Charlotte Golar Richie, UMass-Boston Chancellor Keith
Motley, former staffers, friends and family praising Wilkerson,
her attorneys are pushing for a “considerably” lower sentence,
saying she has “fully accepted responsibility” for the crimes.
“Indeed, she has never stated or implied anything to the
contrary from the outset of this prosecution,” the two
attorneys wrote, saying she resigned after the indictment and
has agreed to be disbarred as a lawyer. She was “never
motivated by a desire to enrich herself, and she never did,”
they said, adding that she currently doesn’t own any property,
has no pension, savings, life insurance. She has been
unemployed since she resigned, they wrote, and ineligible for
unemployment compensation and Social Security.
The only asset she has is $64,000 in retirement contributions
she made as a state senator, but she handed $23,500 of that
over to the feds to repay them for the bribes in the same
amount that were captured on audio and video tapes, they
added. The rest of the money, with the exception of funds
needed for her “bare subsistence,” will be used to make further
payments owed to the IRS, they said.
She lived a “modest” life style and when she was arrested in
October 2008, she didn’t own a car or real estate, and had
only vacationed twice in 15 years, they said. “She has saved
the homes, jobs, and lives of people too numerous to count,”
they added.
She is also currently “the only caretaker for her 75-year-old
mentally ill mother,” they said.
Her attorneys also accused the FBI of a “constant
investigation, including the creation of a growing file, over and
over looking into her connections to numerous persons and
organizations, investigating her son, her travel, her legislative
filings, and repeatedly reviewing and collecting the records of
the State Ethics Commission and Office of Campaign Finance
with respect to her.”
Her attorneys maintained that she had clearance from the State
Ethics Commission for accepting some of the money before
the indictment because of her tax troubles. “But as these
benefits extended beyond her tax crisis, it became
extraordinarily poor judgment for her to continue to accept
them,” they wrote. “She blinded herself to the fact that the
persons offering were in fact expecting something in return,
and that these expectations could very well implicate her
official duties.”
They added, “Her fundamental error was a belief that if she
could posit an independent and good motive for doing
something, this negated the fact that someone was also giving
her something for it. Thus, she was readymade for the
government sting operation which, at every point, was targeted
to a cause it knew she would readily embrace – participation of
black/latino businessmen in economic development in the
minority community.”
Many of the letters of support sought to downplay the charges
and emphasize her political work. “I am not a psychologist,
and I can’t explain what happened to her to cause her to lose
the strong ethical roots that she brought with her into my
office,” wrote Dukakis, who hired Wilkerson as an assistant
legal counsel in his administration. “I do know, however, that
on the tough issues that test people in legislative office, she
invariably came down on the side of the public interest, at least
as I saw it, and did everything she could to stand up for those
who are often without representation in the halls of
government.”
The next court date in the case is Nov. 29 at 3 p.m. at the
Moakley Courthouse.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Check out updates to Boston’s political
scene at The Lit Drop, located at dotnews.com/litdrop.
More articles are available at the Reporter's website.
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