Romney calls for judge to resign

Tuttman released killer without bail

By Michael Levenson Globe Staff / November 24, 2007

Twenty months after he put a career prosecutor on the Massachusetts Superior Court bench, confident in her law-and-order credentials, Mitt Romney called yesterday for the judge to resign because she released without bail a convicted killer who went on to allegedly kill again.

Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman, said yesterday that Judge Kathe M. Tuttman should never have freed Daniel T. Tavares Jr. on personal recognizance in July, after he was charged with assaulting two prison guards. Tavares, 41, was near the end of a 16-year sentence for stabbing his mother to death in 1991 and had threatened in a letter - intercepted by prison officials in February 2006 - to kill Romney and other state officials, Fehrnstrom said.

On Monday, after five months in hiding, Tavares was arrested for allegedly shooting to death Brian Mauck, 30, and Beverly Mauck, 28, newlyweds who lived near him in a rural area south of Tacoma, police said.

Full Story: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/11/24/romney_calls_for_judge_to_resign/