Former Massachusetts Prosecutor: Don't Pardon Mark Wahlberg For Attack On Asian Men

BOSTON (AP) - A former prosecutor in Massachusetts says Mark Wahlberg shouldn't be pardoned for an attack as a youth on two Asian men.

Judith Beals is a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general who argued against a pardon in an opinion piece published this week in The Boston Globe.

She told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that the actor has not acknowledged the racial element of his crimes and has focused instead on his heavy drug and alcohol use at the time.

Beals secured a civil rights injunction against a young Wahlberg in a case accusing him of hurling rocks and racial epithets at black schoolchildren in Boston.

Wahlberg's pardon was filed with the state in November in a different case. He seeks a pardon for hitting a Vietnamese man in the head with a wooden stick while trying to steal alcohol and punching another in the face while trying to avoid police in 1988. He served about 45 days in jail.