Sheriff McCormack’s Bad Call

The night of June twelfth Two Thousand and Nine is one the entire Vineyard community would like to erase from its memory but of course cannot, because that was the night that Jena Pothier, age eighteen, died in a tragic car automobile accident on the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road. The driver of the car was seventeen-year-old Kelly McCarron, Jena’s friend. Ms. McCarron was drunk that night; her blood alcohol levels later tested out at three times the legal limit. Ms. McCarron was injured in the crash and recovered. Last May she pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, with one year to be served in the Barnstable House of Correction for Women.

Last week the news surfaced that Dukes County Sheriff Michael McCormack had quietly allowed Ms. McCarron to cut short her time served in Barnstable. Just before Christmas Ms. McCarron came home to the Vineyard, where she will be allowed to serve the last five months of her prison term at home wearing an electronic monitoring device on her ankle.

And deep wounds that have only just begun to heal have been painfully slashed open.

Sheriff McCormack’s decision came over the strong objections of David and Terry Pothier, Jena’s parents, who participated as victims in the plea bargain that resulted in Ms. McCarron’s sentencing. And he handled things badly, first meeting with the Pothiers and telling them he would not allow Ms. McCarron an early release, and later changing his mind but failing to contact the Pothiers to tell them.

A letter was sent through the postal service just before Christmas but the Pothiers were away and not home to receive it. It is stunning to think that Sheriff McCormack, who claims he agonized over the decision, never picked up the telephone to call the Pothiers and tell them in person about it. What about their agony? Did it occur to the sheriff that the Pothiers would receive this news badly? Did he think about them at all?

Or was the sheriff simply acting inside his old-boy network where things are taken care of quietly, no need to make waves, the less said publicly the better.

Sheriff McCormack won reelection in November in a hard-fought contest that saw some of the practices of his office come under intense scrutiny.

It’s too bad the sheriff took no lessons to heart from that election.