Download The Politics of Murder: The Power and Ambition Behind "The Altar Boy Murder Case" AudioBook Free
Over a hot nighttime in July 1995, Janet Downing, a 42-year-old mother of four, was brutally stabbed 98 times in her home in Somerville, a city two kilometers northwest of Boston. Within hours, a suspect was revealed: 15-year-old Eddie O'Brien, the closest friend of 1 of Janet's sons. But why Eddie? He previously no prior record of criminal habit. He was not mentally ill. He previously neither purpose nor chance to commit the offense. Others experienced both. Yet nothing of this mattered because capabilities considerably beyond his Somerville community decided that Eddie needed to be guilty. As laid out in The Politics of Murder, the timing of this case didn't bode well for Eddie. A activity hoping to avoid the supposed rise of young superpredators was sweeping the country, and juvenile offenders were the goals. Both Massachusetts governor and an elected district attorney who personally litigated this circumstance reinforced juvenile justice reform, and both aspired to raised offices. Eddie O'Brien's circumstance garnered both local and countrywide publicity: He was the vibrant Irish Catholic guy nearby. His grandfather was the retired chief of the Somerville Police Department. Court Television set protected the trial in adult courtroom gavel to gavel, getting in touch with it the altar guy murder circumstance. His highly publicized circumstance changed the juvenile laws and regulations in Massachusetts. Other says began to check out suit. But do the justice system fail Eddie? That is the contention of author-attorney Margo Nash in her explosive exposé, The Politics of Murder. Appointed Eddie's guardian advertisement litem, Nash went to every court program and eventually gained usage of all his files. Now after painstaking research and study of each step of the inspection, trial transcripts, and the forensic research, Nash makes the circumstance that Eddie cannot have determined the crime and that other practical suspects were never properly investigated and that electric power and ambition made his conviction a foregone conclusion.
