Remarks of Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley: Legislative Hearing on Gang Violence and Witness Intimidation April 5, 2005 I'd like to begin by thanking the Committee on Public Safety, and Senator Barrios in particular, for their invitation to testify this morning at this important hearing and for their attention to an issue critical to our criminal justice system. My name is Daniel Conley, and I serve as the district attorney for Suffolk County, which consists of Boston, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop. Suffolk County is primarily comprised of densely populated urban neighborhoods highlighted by their ethnic and racial diversity. When I last testified before this honorable committee last fall, I strove to raise awareness of a pervasive problem facing prosecutors and our partners in law enforcement in combating gun- and gang-related crime in our cities. That is the problem of witness intimidation. I told you that some form of victim or witness intimidation occurs in up to 90 percent of the case we prosecute that involve guns or gangs or serious violence. It is a rare day when at least one of my prosecutors or victim-witness advocates does not deal with this problem in one way or another. Last fall, I described for you how intimidation takes different forms. It can come with all the subtlety of a hammer, a warning to a victim that his or her testimony will result in retribution, or a cadre of gang members wearing T-shirts that read "Stop Snitchin'" walking into a courtroom where their friends are on trial and staring down terrified witnesses. It can be implied, a threatening look from a gang member on a street corner as good and honest citizens walk past. And in our multimedia world, it can be seen in a mock documentary that a gun defendant and his friends were filming last summer, or heard on a CD that a murder defendant recorded with his musical group. The theme of both productions: Stop Snitchin'. I spoke about the difficulty of holding criminals accountable for their violent actions when witnesses are too scared to come forward and perform that most simple but profound act upon which our criminal justice system depends: To raise their right hand, swear to tell the truth, and state, before the law, what they saw and who they saw do it. In short, I endeavored to tell you about the consequences that result when fear scares away the truth. I was far from the only one to sound the clarion call for improved witness protection measures. This body listened, researched the problem, and released a comprehensive report that listed numerous innovative recommendations. It is important to note that the recommendations do not only focus on prosecution, but - cognizant that law enforcement efforts must be proactive as well as reactive - also embrace prevention and intervention. The innovative solutions proposed by this panel should be adopted by the entire Legislature. These include: 1. Increased protections for those who are subject to intimidation; 2. Creation of a statewide victim witness protection fund, so that district attorneys can quickly relocate victims and witnesses who are threatened; 3. New legislation to prohibit the unlawful dissemination of grand jury minutes; 4. Enhanced penalties for gun trafficking crimes, to give us additional tools to take firearms off our streets, because it is just too easy for young people to get their hand on guns; 5. Adopting a new standard for perjury to make it easier to prosecute gang members who lie under oath to protect their violent associates; 6. Eliminating the backlog in the State Police ballistic fingerprinting database to more efficiently track guns used to commit crimes; 7. Creation of a statewide grant program to fund community-based anti-violence initiatives, because if the Boston Miracle of the 1990s taught us anything, it is that all success is shared and law enforcement agencies need engaged, empowered neighborhoods to assist us in keeping our cities safe; 8. And expansion of educational or employment opportunities for at-risk youths, to reach children before they fall into lives of guns and gangs, to make sure they see the inside of Museum of Fine Arts before they see the inside of Suffolk Superior Court. I am grateful to this committee for its work on this issue, and I am grateful, too, to Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, who has also filed innovative legislation embracing many similar recommendations. Additionally, I urge this panel and the entire Legislature to support Lt. Gov. Healey's innovative recommendation to use modern global positioning system tracking devices to monitor the movements of domestic abusers. We must remember that victim and witness intimidation is not limited to gun and gang crimes. It is also prevalent in crimes that occur with intimate relationships and for the first time ever, under the Lt. Governor's proposal, we will seek to use modern technology to restrict the liberties of the abuser, by monitoring his movements to ensure he is staying away from his victim, rather than restricting the liberties of the abused. At its most basic level, witness intimidation is a matter of civil rights. While the problem knows no boundaries, it most frequently affects people without the economic power to help themselves. Violent crime occurs more often in less affluent, urban areas, of which there are several in Massachusetts. In these neighborhoods, a dearth of wealth translates into fewer educational and employment opportunities, and that, combined with large numbers of people living close to each other, is the spark that often ignites violence. When someone becomes a victim of street violence in the communities I serve, or someone witnesses a shooting or stabbing, he or she is often trapped in a threatening environment by the same factors that contributed to the violence in the first place. In many of our cases, victims and witnesses live in the same communities as the criminals they are being asked to testify against - and the bad guys know they live there. In most of our cases, victims and witnesses who are scared do not have the means to relocate themselves. Our victims, our witnesses take the T, or walk, to get to their jobs, to pick up children at school, to go to the market. For them, these everyday tasks that most of us take for granted can become a terrifying ordeal if fate puts them on the same bus as the defendant they are being asked to testify against, or if they must negotiate a street corner where the defendant hangs with his friends. Is it any wonder so many people - like the dozens who were in a Boston park last summer when 11-year-old Jenry Gonzalez was shot in the chest, yet have never stepped forward to try to help investigators - are scared to become witnesses? How many of us would want this choice if we witness a crime: Do the right thing and testify to help get a dangerous person off the street, but risk your safety and that of your family by doing so, or do nothing, and let the violent criminal walk free. And yet, amid the fear that can choke entire neighborhoods into silence, individual acts of great courage emerge. Yesterday, in the Boston Juvenile Court, two 16-year-old boys stood up before a judge and, faced with strong evidence against them, pled guilty to shooting a 15-year-old boy on a Roxbury street two summers ago. It was a horrible crime. The defendants, Saquon Moore and Brenden Barrett, rode up to the victim on their bikes as he left a family cookout. For no reason that we know - and there is never a good reason for these things - each of them pulled out a hand gun and began shooting Anthony Terrell Walton. When the shots knocked Terrell Walton to the pavement, they stood over him and shot into his body some more. Anthony Terrell Walton was shot five times in all. Today, 20 months later, he remains paralyzed below his neck, and will be on a respirator for the rest of his life. Up until very recently, he could not speak. This young victim - a boy who loved sports and his family - is now serving a life sentence inside his own body. Saquon Moore and Branden Barrett were each sentenced to 14 years in state prison. I mention this case because it is the very rare exception that proves why we need to enact the recommendations before us today. You see, we were able to arrest Saquon Moore and Branden Barrett, and a build a case strong enough to persuade them to plead guilty, because five witnesses told police who they saw shoot Terrell Walton. Were it not for their courage, were it not for their brave disregard for the street code that warns them to stop snitching, were it not for their righteous disgust at seeing a boy so grievously harmed, this case would have gone unsolved and justice before the law would not be Terrell Walston's. You should also know that in recorded phone calls from jail after his arrest, Saquon Moore laughed when he talked about the shooting, and talked about killing witnesses. But courage prevailed, and justice followed. We need to continue to strengthen our response to witness intimidation, so more prosecutions end like Anthony Walton's, rather than Jenry Gonzalez's. We need more resources to relocate and protect victims and witnesses, we need stiffer penalties for gun crimes, we need more tools to prosecute gang members who lie to protect their friends, and we need increased intervention and crime prevention measures. Protecting victims and witnesses, and holding violent offenders accountable, is a battle we fight every day. We fight it willingly, secure in the belief that our mission is crucial to the continued protection of our citizens, that our work makes our neighborhoods safer places to live, work and raise our families, where the sounds of children laughing is never interrupted by gunfire and sirens. We fight it willingly, asking only for the tools that will enable us to better fulfill that mission. We ask for the tools to better protect those who step forward to perform that most profound task: to raise their right hands, take an oath, and say this is what I saw, and this is who I saw do it, and fear can no longer scare away the truth. Thank you. Return to the previous page.