She’s baaack! Ellsworth, Maine prosecutor Mary N. Kellett is at it again.
If you’ll recall, she’s the one who handled the Vladek Filler case. Her charge of spousal rape against Filler was so badly handled that the trial judge overturned Filler’s original conviction. He was acquitted on all but a misdemeanor charge on retrial earlier this year.
Filler’s ex-wife Ligia made the claim of spousal rape in the course of the couple’s divorce and custody cases. Ligia had a history of mental illness and had made previous false accusations against boyfriends. There was no physical evidence to support her charges because she refused to be examined. Also, she made the claim many days after the alleged assault. In short, there was an entire absence of objective evidence at trial, but that didn’t deter Mary N. Kellett.
It did deter the family court. After Vladek Filler’s original conviction during which Kellett committed repeated acts of prosecutorial misconduct that would eventually result in retrial, the family court gave sole custody of their two children to Vladek. I’m not sure how many times family courts have given custody to men convicted of spousal rape, but it gives a good idea of how little the court thought of Ligia Filler.
So the kids lived with Vladek while he awaited retrial. The older one testified at the second trial that his mother had often assaulted Vladek, but not the other way around. Vladek was acquitted of all but one misdemeanor count.
Given the weakness of the case, it should never have been pursued by the prosecution in the first place. Mary N. Kellett’s multiple violations of ethical rules and apparent obstruction of justice are detailed in this analysis (S.A.V.E.).
The analysis also includes at least eight other cases, all involving rape or sexual assault, in which Mary N. Kellett has either pursued a case without evidence, used fabricated allegations against innocent men or ignored obvious red flags such as allegations arising in the course of a custody battle that had occurred 10 years previously.
Those were used in an attempt to have Mary N. Kellett disbarred earlier this year. The complaint is still pending.
Well, add this one to the list (sorry, no link available; all quotations from the Ellsworth American). It seems that Keovilaisack Sayasane was charged by Mary N. Kellett with “terrorizing, assault and criminal threatening” of his wife. But, as so often seems to happen, there were problems with Mary N. Kellett’s case. The biggest one was that the alleged victim, Sayasane’s wife, intended to testify on his behalf.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Toothaker said he had expected Sayasane”s wife to testify favorably on his behalf July 20…
“She was going to testify very favorably to get him out of trouble,’ Toothaker said.
But if you’re Mary N. Kellett, you don’t let a little thing like your only witness to the incident testifying for the defense get in your way. So she got creative.
Two days before the trial was to start, the prosecution told the wife that Sayasane had killed his first wife, Toothaker said. The news “sent shivers up her spine, as it should,’ he said.
But there was just one thing wrong with that bit of information – it was a lie. Sayasane does have a 25-year-old manslaughter conviction, but against another man, not his ex-wife. That part was added by Mary N. Kellett.
The whole scheme backfired. When Sayasane’s wife heard Kellett’s lie, she understandably backed off of her defense of him. But when his attorney found out about Kellett’s witness tampering, he moved for dismissal, which was granted. Another loss for Kellett in a case that never should have been pursued in the first place.
I wonder how much taxpayer’s money Mary N. Kellett has wasted in her single-minded drive to ignore the canons of ethics and try every man accused by any woman regardless of how shaky the evidence.
Her tampering with a witness in the Sayasane case should be reported to Board of Overseers of the Maine State Bar. Kellett plainly violated ethical guidelines for prosecutors and should be disciplined. The more complaints bar associations receive, the more likely they are to take disciplinary action. From here, Kellett looks like a loose cannon. Moreover, she looks like she’s got an anti-male agenda.
Consider this: Vladek Filler’s sentencing is scheduled for August 10th. The prosecution (no longer Mary N. Kellett; she was pulled from the case for reasons I think I can guess) intends to seek the maximum sentence for the Class D misdemeanor of which he was convicted – one year hard time. Vladek has no criminal record. Plus, he’s the sole custodian of two minor children.
But as this article shows, the same prosecutor, Paul Cavenaugh, sought only a 30-day sentence for a female teacher who sexually abused a 13-year-old boy (Bangor Daily News, 11/21/08). His reasoning? She had children at home who’d be without their Mom. Of course the kids also had a father as well as his mother in the home to care for them. But when it comes to Vladek Filler’s kids, Cavenaugh apparently believes they don’t need any parent for a year. Amazing.
Of course Paul Cavenaugh and Mary N. Kellett are two different people, and the one shouldn’t be tarred with the bad acts of the other. But they also work for the same District Attorney’s office, and that office time and again shows its willingness to try to imprison men based on patently unbelievable claims by women.
The suspension or disbarment of Mary N. Kellett would be richly deserved. It would also send a message to other prosecutors in Ellsworth, Maine, that her methods aren’t acceptable.