Joe and Marie Salvati's family tragedy has found a national audience this month in Reader's Digest. (RD photo of Joe Salvati above.)
The venerable magazine retells the saga from Joe's arrest in 1967 as a day laborer and his wife's transformation into family breadwinner to care for their children. He emerged from prison 30 years later as a gray-haired grandfather who missed out on his children's lives. The story of his pro-bono lawyer Victor Garo is there, too, including Garo's promise to his dying mother to win Salvati's freedom.
One of the stories Salvati shared with the magazine was the day his youngest daughter Gail visited him in prison. She was 8 years old.
----"Daddy, what's an electric chair? Are you going to get it? The kids in school say you are." Shaken, he explained that it wasn't true, that her classmates were just trying to scare her. "I went back to my cell," says Salvati, "and asked the guard to lock me in. They can tell when you get a bad visit. I sobbed off and on for a week. I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach. And to think, all this was happening because the FBI wanted it to." -----
Perhaps RD readers will have some thoughts about the Justice Department's recent decision to appeal the $101 million verdict against the government for wrongful imprisonment in this case.
2 comments:
The Justice Department's decision to appeal the verdict is a huge disappointment.
Hats off to Judge Gertner. I read her 'Memorandum and Order'.
In the meantime, The Boston Herald reports that Peter Limone's home was raided by the state police yesterday.
Comments?
RD reader
I too read Judge Gertner's decision, which is amazing - but while it is easy to say that she was the rare judge who would have the guts to rule as she did, most of the federal judges in Boston are appalled by this whole history. I also heard her speak about this at a criminal defense seminar recently. The lesson she took from it was the need for the prosecutors to not compartmentalize evidence so that they can avoid giving discovery to defendants - it was the way the information was kept from the prosecutors that allowed this injustice to go undiscovered. What is ironic is that the response of Boston police is to further compartmentalize information to prevent disclosure - they now routinely fight disclosures that are not actually in an investigating officer's file - it seems that the lesson is to further hide evidence so injustices do not get discovered, NOT make sure the injustices do not happen in the first place.
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