[dropcap]S[/dropcap]ome people insist on a bad ending to their story. O.J. Simpson, after skating on the murder of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman, decided to go gangsta over some memorabilia knowing full well that the world hated his guts and that a target was painted on his back with any prosecutor in his range of vision.
Personally I worked with a number of addicts who got their asses kicked, hard, by whatever their poison, only to get back in the ring repeatedly for another go. Plenty of them never made it back out. There just seems to be something in the makeup of some people that yearns for speed and a brick wall.
Take Mary Kellett, for instance.
The infamous Ellsworth, Maine, prosecutor has been making her bread and butter of innocent men corralled into show trials conducted by a gaggle of back slapping good-old-whatevers in Maine’s idea of what passes for a justice system. They even have a local media that looks the other way and whistles while it happens.
But recently she has gotten some unintended attention because of the staggering corruption she brought to the Vladek Filler case. Actually, the corruption was in the fact there was a Vladek Filler case at all. Never should have happened.
[quote float=”right”]The former wife in this case was prepared to testify on behalf of the accused, rather than against him, in order to get him cleared of the charges.[/quote]Now, after all the bad press for her office, a campaign against her that went to the Governor’s office and a pending bar complaint with some real meat on it, you’d think she’d lay low and wait for the storm to pass. Well, if she were smart. Apparently any assessment of her along those lines would have to omit that particular adjective. Kellett is at it again, but this time, one would hope, she has screwed the pooch so badly that even her cadre of cronies can’t save her.
Kellett was placed in charge of prosecuting one Keovilaisack Sayasane with “terrorizing, assault and criminal threatening,” a charge which would hinge largely on the testimony of his former wife, the alleged victim in the case. But Kellett had a problem, and in Kellett’s world anything that interferes with convicting a man is a problem. The former wife in this case was prepared to testify on behalf of the accused, rather than against him, in order to get him cleared of the charges. It might be speculated that after seeing a domestic situation turn into the potential for hard time for her former husband the supposed victim in this case decided the state was taking things a tad too far.
So Mary Kellett conjured up a solution to this one, Ellsworth style. She told the former wife that Sayasane had murdered his first wife. The only pesky detail being that the story was a complete and utter lie. According to The Ellsworth American, who of course did not mention Kellett’s name in their article, the less-than-impressed judge was presented with Kellett’s actions by Sayasane’s attorney, Jeffrey Toothaker, and unceremoniously threw out the entire case.
[box type=”tick” icon=”none”]Witness tampering, anyone?[/box]
According to Toothaker, the wife’s response to the lie was drastic. It “sent shivers up her spine, as it should,” he said. And it caused her to withdraw from giving testimony, an action that would have allowed Kellett and the state to continue unimpeded with a bad case.
It is fitting, with Kellett’s track record. As was revealed in a press conference in front of the Hancock County, Maine, Courthouse during Vladek Filler’s trial, Kellett has prosecuted a large number of cases lacking in evidence, and many where exculpatory evidence clearly points to the innocence of the accused. Understandably, and luckily for most, her track record of convictions is abysmal, but has resulted nonetheless in ruined lives and millions of dollars of squandered taxpayer monies.
[quote float=”left”]Part of this story may be soon coming to a conclusion. There remains a bar complaint pending against Mary Kellett for her unethical actions in the first Filler trial.[/quote] Despite being publicly exposed, Kellett has persisted in a pattern of unscrupulous and illegal conduct and has now crossed the line into unambiguous criminality. A significant part of the problem, of course, is her boss, District Attorney Carletta Bassano. Kellett has been working under Bassano’s direction, and the D.A. is well past the point of avoiding culpability for Kellett’s actions. Though it is likely not provable, yet, this entire affair reeks of conspiracy to corrupt justice on the part of the Hancock County Prosecutor’s Office, from the top down.
None of this would have been possible, however, were it not for the indifference and enabling of local media such as The Bangor Daily News and The Ellsworth American. There was a time when the media loved scandal. Now, when the scandal is rooted in gender politics, they are a part of it.
Part of this story may be soon coming to a conclusion. There remains a bar complaint pending against Mary Kellett for her unethical actions in the first Filler trial. The conviction she obtained in that trial was overturned by the Maine State Supreme Court based on prosecutorial misconduct.
If there remains anyone left in the state of Maine that will take the appropriate action against this prosecutor gone awry, then we can move on to address other matters, such as Bassano.
However, if Kellett gets yet another pass (yes, that pass) on her misdeeds, then A Voice for Men will spearhead a complaint to the Overseers of the Bar in Maine for her clear-cut tampering with a witness in the Sayasane trial.
