Killer's Release Puts Romney On Defense

This story was written by CBSNews.com political reporter Brian Montopoli.

But Massachusetts prosecutors charged that Tavares had assaulted a pair of corrections officers more than a year before, and they asked a judge to hold him on $50,000 bail - effectively keeping Tavares behind bars. A district court judge agreed, but Superior Court Judge Kathe M. Tuttman overturned that decision and released Tavares on his own recognizance in July.

Now Tavares has been arrested for killing a young couple in Washington State. And Tuttman, the judge who released Tavares, finds herself at the center of a growing battle between leading Republican presidential candidates, among them the man who appointed her: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

"The governor is going to have to explain his appointment, and the judge is going to have to explain her decision, but it's not an isolated situation," former New York City mayor and presidential contender Rudy Giuliani told the Associated Press over the weekend. "Governor Romney did not have a good record in dealing with violent crime."

On Saturday, Romney called on Tuttman to resign. He told reporters that the decision to release Tavares "showed an inexplicable lack of good judgment in a hearing that decided to put someone on the street who had not only in the past been convicted of manslaughter, but had threatened the lives of other individuals and was a flight risk."

One of the "other individuals" Tavares threatened was Romney himself, in a Feb. 2006 letter intercepted by prison officials.

Former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, a Democrat, says Romney is "scapegoating" Tuttman.

"If you look at the evidence, you'd be hard pressed to disagree with the judge about what the appropriate disposition was," Harshbarger told CBSNews.com. "That's the basis on which people are saying, 'look, on the facts, and the law, she had no choice.' Now I suppose technically she had a choice. But by any standard of judicial review she acted appropriately."

"He's making a political calculation, and she's an easy target," adds Harshbarger. "She did what 99 percent of judges should and ought to do here as an independent member of the judiciary, and she followed the law."

The judge has not commented publicly.

Edward J. McCormick III, a longtime Boston-area criminal defense lawyer and former Republican congressional candidate, echoes that assessment, arguing that Romney is engaged in "political grandstanding."

"My understanding about Judge Tuttman - she was a prosecutor her whole life," he says. "This isn't some career defense lawyer sitting there with a ponytail testing the marijuana laws every other day. This is a woman who in most cases is at least going to appreciate the prosecutor's viewpoint."

Romney did not make crime a central part of his agenda as governor, according to Boston-area Republican political analyst Todd Domke.

"That's not really what he was known for," says Domke. "Romney had more of a businessman's traditional focus, on fiscal issues."

In the wake of Giuliani's criticism, however, the Romney campaign has gone on the offensive. The campaign yesterday released to reporters a document trumpeting Romney's "solid record fighting crime in Massachusetts," which includes statistics supporting the notion that both violent crime and overall crime rates declined when Romney was governor. Giuliani charges that there was "an increase in murder and violent crime" during that time.

In the 1988 presidential campaign, another Massachusetts politician with presidential hopes, former Gov. Michael Dukakis, found out just how damaging this type of story can be. Dukakis took heavy criticism from Republican nominee George H.W. Bush over a furlough program that allowed convicted murderer "Willie" Horton to temporarily join the general population. Horton failed to return to prison from his weekend furlough and raped a woman before being recaptured. Dukakis, who went on to lose the presidential race, was lambasted for being "soft on crime."

Democratic political consultant Michael Goldman, of the Government Insight Group, says the Romney campaign is not handling the Tavares issue well. He argues that Romney should have pointed out that Tuttman was a prosecutor with a "great record" instead of throwing someone whom he had appointed "under the bus."

"The greatest skill of smart politicians is limiting the story so it doesn't have legs," he says. "Not only did they give the story legs, they basically gave it an engine and propelled it."
By Brian Montopoli