By Peter Gelzinis  |   Friday, May 20, 2011  |  http://www.bostonherald.com

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Probation Commissioner John O’Brien suspended as Mass. Treasurer Timothy Cahill explains decision to hire O’Brien’s wife, daughter

Published: Monday, May 24, 2010, 3:45 PM     Updated: Monday, May 24, 2010, 4:03 PM

This is a 4:02 p.m. update of a story posted at 10:53 this morning.

BOSTON – Massachusetts Probation Commissioner John O’Brien was suspended Monday over concerns about the hiring and promotion of probation officers.

In a joint statement issued Monday, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall and Chief Justice for Administration and Management Robert Mulligan said they were deeply concerned with media reports on management practices within the Probation Department.

They said O’Brien has been placed on administrative leave, effective immediately.

Timothy P. Cahill

O’Brien’s hiring practices have been the subject of front-page stories in The Boston Globe.

The justices said they were concerned not only with the administration of the department, but with how the media reports may affect the public’s perception of the integrity of the judicial branch.

This action came on the heels of independent gubernatorial candidate Timothy P. Cahill’s statements Monday that patronage is a part of politics, but politics played no role in his decision to hire the wife and daughter of a state official who has been suspended amid allegations of rampant patronage at his own agency.

The state treasurer said he knows Probation Commissioner John O’Brien, and O’Brien has supported his political career in their hometown of Quincy. Yet he said that didn’t influence his decision to hire O’Brien’s wife, Laurie, and one of the couple’s daughters.

“There’s no personal relationship,” Cahill said of John O’Brien. “He’s not hanging out at my house or anything like that. He’s a political supporter, or has been for a while, but that didn’t influence the decisions I made about his members of his family.

“We had openings for positions. They applied for those positions. I’ve known Laurie O’Brien for a long time, because she’s a Quincy resident,” Cahill said.

Gov. Deval L. Patrick heightened attention on the issue by branding the Probation Department a “rogue agency” and urging the Legislature to pass a department-realignment bill he filed in January.

Deval L. Patrick

Cahill offered a defense of political patronage when asked about descriptions of seemingly highly qualified applicants being passed over for probation jobs in favor of those related to politicians.

“Does that not happen in government all the time?” he asked. “Obviously, it is part of the political process. It’s an unfortunate part when it’s been brought to this level.”

Cahill noted none of his family members work for O’Brien.

Patrick, a Democrat seeking re-election, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles D. Baker said Attorney General Martha M. Coakley should investigate. Marshall and Mulligan appointed former Big Dig investigator Paul Ware to conduct an investigation on their behalf.

Cahill said an investigation is not needed. Rather, he supports returning oversight for the department from the legislative branch to the judiciary.

“The Legislature really deserves the blame for this,” Cahill said. “They shouldn’t have made the move when they made it. They made it simply because they wanted to control the jobs.”

He said if oversight is returned to the judicial branch, then it “could determine whether Commissioner O’Brien should stay or should leave, and they can reorganize the place around making it work for probation, making it work for public safety.”

Patrick told reporters the Probation Department is a “rogue agency.”

“What I thought was a problem may be even a bigger problem, and I want to encourage the Legislature to take up this bill,” the governor said.

His bill proposes combining the Probation and Parole departments under the executive branch, which Patrick says will create a modern agency allowing people to transition from prison life back into society. It would also give oversight to the governor instead of the Legislature.

Cahill said that would likely just shift the source of patronage, which Patrick dismissed with a quip.

“You mean, will people still ask for jobs?” the governor asked with a chuckle as he entered a student forum at Suffolk University’s Rappaport Center. “Yeah, I’m sure people would still ask for jobs.”

Nonetheless, Patrick said patronage should not just be accepted.

“I don’t think that’s enough of an explanation, and it’s certainly not one that’s going to satisfy me or anybody else in the general public,” he said.

Also Monday, all seven justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court signed an order calling for “a prompt and thorough administrative inquiry into alleged improprieties with respect to the hiring and promotion of employees within the Probation Department as well as other practices and management decisions within the Probation Department.”

The court appointed Paul Ware, an attorney with the Boston law firm of Goodwin Procter, to conduct the inquiry and report back to the court within 90 days.

Ware had previously been tapped by Attorney General Martha Coakley to oversee the criminal investigation into the fatal July 2006 Big Dig ceiling tunnel collapse.

The justices appointed Ronald Corbett, Executive Director of the Supreme Judicial Court and the former Deputy Commissioner of Probation, as acting administrator of the Probation Department to replace O’Brien.

Meanwhile, the treasurer picked up the endorsements of the patrolman’s and superior officer police unions in Quincy. He said after a month of negative ads against him by the Republican Governors Association, “It’s nice to know that people are going to stand with you.”

Lt. Timothy Sorgi, president of the Quincy Police Superior Officer’s Association, said in a statement: “Tim Cahill is a longtime friend of law enforcement and is committed to making sure that our men and women wearing the uniform have the resources and support that they need.”

By Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff / November 20, 2010

Another brother, John P. Bulger, lost his state pension in 2003 after pleading guilty to perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about contacts with his fugitive brother. John Bulger was a retired clerk magistrate at Boston Juvenile Court and sued unsuccessfully to reclaim his pension. His lawyer argued before the Supreme Judicial Court that he had not violated his oath as a clerk magistrate but lied to grand juries out of “family loyalty.’’

Christopher Bulger, 41, has publicly demonstrated his own fierce family allegiance. In 2002, when his father was subpoenaed to testify before a congressional committee investigating the FBI’s relationship with Whitey Bulger, Christopher Bulger lashed out against US Representative Stephen F. Lynch of South Boston, a member of the committee, for not defending his father.

In South Boston Online, Christopher Bulger called Lynch “simply, unabashedly opportunistic.’’ The public spat was viewed in part as an eruption between two family clans: Lynch had beaten Christopher’s brother, William M. Bulger Jr., to win their father’s seat in the state Senate after the elder Bulger stepped down in 1996.

In his testimony before the special counsel, Christopher Bulger seemed to infuriate the independent counsel. The report says Bulger was “consistently evasive and untruthful in responding to questions under oath.’’

“He made repeated attempts to deflect the questioning,’’ the report says. “Many of his answers were blatantly false in the view of independent counsel.’’ The report suggests the probability that Bulger knew of the extent of fraud for years but tried to maintain “plausible deniability.’’

The report shows that as legal counsel, Bulger played a key role in preserving the job of one patronage hire, Ashley Losapio, who had been giving information to criminals. She received a two-week suspension and a transfer to a different court division, but was not fired. While acknowledging that the department’s hands may have been tied because of union issues, Ware wrote, “It is inconceivable that a responsible private sector company would continue the employment of an employee who knowingly used company computers to assist her criminal friends.’’

Bulger also acknowledged regularly updating O’Brien about the status of the investigation. In testimony under oath in October, Bulger told investigators that he briefed him two or three times a week and that he would call O’Brien that very afternoon to brief him “unless I’m told not to,’’ according to a transcript obtained by the Globe.

In one exchange, detailed in testimony obtained by the Globe, the investigators apparently grew frustrated with Bulger as he denied ever seeing a list of names of potential hires, though he had encouraged an employee to provide it to the investigators.

“Mr. Bulger, please. You’re legal counsel to the Probation Department,’’ the questioner said, according to the report. “There is an investigation going on which you have said you treat as a criminal investigation. Your employee comes to you and says: ‘Here’s a list of recommenders for particular candidates. Do I take this to independent counsel? And you said yes without looking at the list?’ ’’

“Yes,’’ Bulger answered. “Yes.’’

Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at ebbert@globe.com.

Thomas M. Finneran pushed through a 2001 change in law that gave John J. O’Brien personal control over Probation Department hiring and promotion.

By Scott Allen Globe Staff / November 20, 2010

The longtime probation commissioner — John J. O’Brien, who now faces firing and criminal investigation — is a Finneran protégé and former jogging buddy.

It was Finneran, more than anyone else, who pushed through the 2001 change in law that gave O’Brien personal control over hiring and promotion in the 2,000-employee agency.

Yet when he got the chance to explain how probation could have become an employment agency for politicians’ friends, families, and supporters, the normally loquacious Finneran became a stone.

Under questioning from independent counsel Paul F. Ware Jr. at Ware’s law office in Boston’s Financial District, Finneran took his constitutional right to remain silent to an extreme.

“What’s your current home address?’’ asked Ware, a former federal prosecutor used to smoking out reluctant witnesses.

“Based upon advice from counsel, I’m not going to answer that,’’ replied Finneran, who has had trouble in the past with sworn testimony. He resigned as speaker in 2004 amid a perjury investigation based on his testimony in a lawsuit. The charges were later dismissed, but he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

Ware asked if Richard Hayes, the lawyer who accompanied Finneran to the Sept. 21 meeting, was, in fact, Finneran’s lawyer.

“I’m going to invoke my right to remain silent,’’ came the reply.

Ware said Hayes would have to leave if he was not, in fact, Finneran’s attorney. Even that did not shake Finneran and Hayes from their script.

Finneran was invoking his constitutional right to remain silent, while the lawyer said he was not allowed to speak to Ware because the Supreme Judicial Court had said lawyers could sit in on their client’s testimony but not participate. Ware had to step out of the room to learn from Hayes that he was working for the former speaker.

Eventually, Ware gave up on getting meaningful answers, but he kept asking questions anyway:

“Did you pressure Mr. O’Brien in any way to make jobs available in exchange for increases in the budget?’’

“Was any gratuity or payment to your knowledge ever given to Mr. O’Brien in exchange for his hiring individuals recommended by the Legislature?’’

Is there “any other information that you may feel exonerates you?’’

No comment. No comment. No comment.

Ware said yesterday that questioning Finneran was frustrating because the former speaker knows so much.

Finneran is one of the few people who knows that the roots of probation’s current patronage scandal go back to 1997, when the late chief justice for administration, John J. Irwin Jr., lowered the education requirements for probation commissioner so that O’Brien, who has only a bachelor’s degree, would qualify.

“Speaker Finneran was there at the creation,’’ Ware said. “I had hoped to elicit the truth from Speaker Finneran, and instead I was stonewalled.’’

But Finneran regained his voice the day after the release of Ware’s report. He defended himself on his morning radio show on WRKO-AM.

Scott Allen can reached at allen@globe.com

By Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff / November 20, 2010

With the help of two influential businessmen, one the developer of a major project in her district, former state senator Dianne Wilkerson received a no-show job at a local college that paid $15,000, federal prosecutors say.

The new allegation, which was immediately denied by Wilkerson’s lawyer, was presented yesterday in a sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors. The government recommended that Wilkerson be sentenced next month to four years in prison for taking $23,500 in bribes in the FBI sting that led to her arrest in 2008. She pleaded guilty in June to eight counts of attempted extortion.

The proposed sentence is two months longer than federal probation officials recommended but is warranted because of Wilkerson’s history of ethical lapses and illegal conduct, including a 1997 conviction for tax evasion, according to the office of US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz.

“As outlined below, between Wilkerson’s conviction in 1997 and her plea in this case, Wilkerson repeatedly demonstrated that she believed that she was above the law,’’ said the 17-page memorandum.

But Wilkerson’s lawyer, Max D. Stern of Boston, recommended that his client be sentenced to substantially less than the three years and two months suggested as a minimum period of incarceration in federal sentencing guidelines.

Stern, who said he will be more specific at Wilkerson’s sentencing, said she exercised “extraordinarily poor judgment’’ by taking the bribes, but never sought to enrich herself. He cited her years of public service and commitment to the poor and oppressed. He also denied that Wilkerson received a no-show job at Curry College.

“It was real,’’ he wrote. Wilkerson planned to moderate a lecture series on politics and the law, he wrote, but the college eliminated the position after she became a “public relations liability.’’ Wilkerson became a liability following a suit against her by the state attorney general’s office for alleged campaign finance violations, according to Stern.

The government’s sentencing memorandum details a long history of misconduct and financial problems for Wilkerson, many of them previously reported. But in a new allegation, prosecutors say entrepreneurs with business in Wilkerson’s district and with state government helped her in 2005 to engage in “another set of unethical and ultimately unlawful financial transactions.’’

Through the efforts of the men, identified only as A.W. and J.K., “Wilkerson obtained a no-show job at a local college,’’ said the memorandum.

The men urged the college to give Wilkerson a $15,000 contract because she outspent what she earned each year by $60,000, according to prosecutors.

Although the memorandum did not identify the men or the college, a spokesman for Arthur Winn, founder of WinnCompanies, who retired as chief executive in 2009, yesterday said the developer “facilitated an interview for a job’’ at Curry College.

“Beyond that,’’ said the spokesman, Alan Eisner, “Mr. Winn had no involvement and received nothing in return.’’

At the time Winn helped Wilkerson, she had become the legislative champion of one of his major Boston development projects, the failed $800 million Columbus Center venture.

The man identified by prosecutors as J.K. is John W. Keith, chief executive officer of Keith Companies and a trustee of Curry College. He confirmed in a brief interview that he testified before a grand jury that he helped Wilkerson obtain a position at Curry.

Keith’s lawyer, George C. McMahon of Quincy, said yesterday that the teaching position dealt with government affairs and paid $25,000, but he vigorously denied that it was intended to be a no-show job. “She showed up for a couple of lectures, but after that she didn’t show up and she was fired,’’ he said.

The allegation is not the first time Winn’s name has come up in the Wilkerson scandal. Winn acknowledged last year that he gave $10,000 to Wilkerson in 2004 to help her pay tax debts but said it had nothing to do with wanting assistance in securing public funds for Columbus Center. In September, Martin Raffol, a former top executive of the residential arm of WinnCompanies, pleaded guilty to illegally funneling $12,000 in campaign contributions to four Massachusetts congressmen in a federal case that was an offshoot of the Wilkerson corruption investigation.

Wilkerson is to be sentenced the week of Dec. 6. Her codefendant, Boston city councilor Chuck Turner, is to be sentenced Jan. 25 on one count of attempted extortion and three counts of lying to FBI agents in connection with his conviction in October for taking a $1,000 bribe.

Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.

US Attorney Carmen Ortiz said after the verdict that Turner had “made choices of his own free will.”

“He’s a public official who betrayed the people he was elected to serve,” she said. “What people lose sight of is the fact that public corruption erodes the confidence that the public has in the system.”

The attempted extortion charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, while the false statements charges carry a maximum of five years each. Ortiz would not disclose what sentence prosecutors would recommend, but said that under federal sentencing guidelines Turner could face some time in prison.

US District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock set a sentencing hearing for Jan. 25.

The underlying crime was a relatively simple one. Prosecutors alleged that Turner accepted a payoff for helping Boston businessman Ronald Wilburn obtain a coveted liquor license. Wilburn was secretly cooperating with the FBI and videotaped the exchange.

By the accounts of both prosecutors and the defense, Turner was a mere afterthought in the FBI sting. The primary target was state Senator Dianne Wilkerson, who pleaded guilty earlier this year. She was caught on videotape accepting five bribes totaling $6,500 from Wilburn in connection with the same liquor license and $17,000 from undercover FBI agents seeking help with a commercial development in Roxbury.

But when Turner responded to an e-mail that Wilkerson sent councilors in June 2007 about Wilburn’s inability to obtain a license, the councilor scheduled a public hearing. Based on what Wilburn testified were rumors that Turner accepted payoffs, authorities decided to see whether the councilor would accept a bribe, as Wilkerson had already done three times.

The prosecution faced several obstacles at trial. For one thing, the surveillance videotape that Wilburn made on Aug. 3, 2007, inside the councilor’s Roxbury district office from a briefcase rigged with a camera was of relatively poor quality. It was impossible for spectators in court to see cash change hands.

When prosecutors slowed it down and clicked through the video frame-by-frame, however, spectators could see what appeared to be a greenish lump changing hands.

The prosecution’s other obstacle was Wilburn himself. A few months after the arrests of Wilkerson and Turner in the autumn of 2008, the government’s cooperating witness told the Globe he was no longer cooperating.

In the February 2009 article, he criticized how the government treated him in the undercover investigation and said he was upset that authorities had arrested only two individuals, both of them black politicians.

Wilburn said he became a cooperating witness in the belief that the government was investigating what he described as more pervasive corruption within the Boston Licensing Board and its process for awarding liquor licenses.

But after Wilburn initially refused to testify, Judge Woodlock threatened him with jail, and Wilburn relented.

During three days on the stand, he sometimes had trouble remembering dates and gave varying accounts of how he thrust a wad of cash into Turner’s hand. Wilburn and Assistant US Attorney John T. McNeil shouted at each other in a dramatic confrontation.

And defense lawyer Barry P. Wilson, of Boston, portrayed Wilburn as a ne’er-do-well who hung out with criminals and became a cooperating witness in the Wilkerson-Turner investigation because he desperately needed the $29,099 that the FBI paid him.

But Wilburn did not stray from the core allegation against Turner and said he gave the councilor all the cash that an FBI agent had handed him moments earlier — a wad that the agent had testified totaled $1,000.

Several legal specialists who watched the trial said they thought Wilson might have planted enough reasonable doubt to prompt a deadlock on the jury, leading to a mistrial. But reasonable doubt evaporated, they said, after Turner rejected the advice of his lawyers and took the stand in his own defense — the only witness called by his legal team.

During two days on the stand, Turner looked at a photograph of his handshake with Wilburn and testified that the businessman evidently handed him “something” but insisted that he did not remember receiving cash. Indeed, he said he did not remember meeting Wilburn three times that summer and was not sure whether he had ever encountered him.

“I don’t remember,” he repeatedly replied to McNeil’s rapid-fire cross-examination.

He further testified that he never looked down at his hand during the handshake because it would have been “disrespectful.” He called the exchange a “preacher’s handshake” and a “minister’s handshake,” and said his decorum sprang from a Biblical admonition against undue focus on money, although he did not concede he received cash.

McNeil used Turner’s words against him in the prosecutor’s closing argument Thursday, saying “there was nothing godly” about the handshake and that the councilor had in reality participated in the “oldest handshake in American politics, the sly slip of cash.”

Wilson, for his part, insisted that Turner never did anything but his job. If his client took money, he said, it was $200 at the most, and Turner never did any favors for Wilburn in exchange. He theorized that Wilburn pocketed $800 in FBI cash.

In recent history, no sitting Boston city councilor has been convicted of a crime, according to city officials and political observers.

The closest was Gerald F. O’Leary of Mattapan, a former state representative who served on the Boston City Council from 1968 to 1975, when he lost his seat. A few years later as an elected member of the School Committee, O’Leary tried to extort $650,000 from a bus company hired to implement the city’s school desegregation program. He resigned, pleaded guilty, and served 13 months in federal prison.

“The jury has made its verdict in this case and while I am deeply saddened for my colleague and his family, I am in discussion with corporation counsel and will respond in greater detail soon,” Ross said.

“I’ve known Councilor Turner for many years,” said At-Large City Councilor Felix G. Arroyo, who worked in Turner’s office from January 2000 to July 2004. “He was accused and convicted of something that is out of character with the person I know. My heart goes out to him and his family. ”

“Today is a very sad and unfortunate day for the city of Boston. Councilor Turner has represented the people of his district well for over a decade. I remain shocked at the actions Councilor Turner has been found guilty of today and will continue to work hard promoting a spirit of public trust and confidence in our elected officials and government agencies,” Mayor Thomas M. Menino said in a statement.

If Turner resigns or is kicked off the Council, a special election would be held to fill his seat representing District 7, an area in the heart of Boston that includes Roxbury, Lower Roxbury, and parts of the Fenway, South End, and Dorchester.

The conviction will also force Turner to forfeit his city pension, according to state law. He can request a hearing before the city pension board and is entitled to a refund of the money he paid into the system over the last decade.