Court Opinion

ID: 9518533
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:55:21.821237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:29:29.594117
License: Public Domain

Brown, J.
(concurring). Collateral to this appeal is defense counsel’s claim that, because of the defendant’s mental illness, penal incarceration is an inappropriate — indeed, dangerous — consequence for her.1 Counsel appears to suggest that this court should reverse Leavitt’s conviction simply to facilitate the fashioning of a new sentence that will take into account “the reality . . . of . . . [her] mental illness.” The defendant may well be mentally ill, and in need of treatment. The Legislature has provided some measure of help for mentally ill prisoners. Such treatment is available now to this defendant as to any other convicted defendant. See G. L. c. 123, § 18. Nevertheless, I am always amazed how those accused of so-called “white-collar” crime have the compelling need to state, at the moment when they stand convicted before the bar of justice, how and why their socio*597economic status has prepared them so poorly for any period of incarceration. The point is often pressed that it is not in society’s best interests to remove such “valuable” people from the mainstream of life, and place them in an environment populated only by “common” criminals. I have never been impressed by those arguments, as I see these defendants as what they are: convicted felons.
It is understandable that McLean Hospital or some other “facility of choice” would be a more desirable place to serve a sentence than one of the Commonwealth’s correctional institutions. To be sure, neither M.C.I., Framing-ham, nor M.C.I., Walpole, has ever been mistaken for a country club. But that is not the way the system is supposed to work. Doctors, lawyers, judges, nursing home operators, merchants, politicians, and other professionals must not be encouraged to believe that there is one standard for them and another for those involved in so-called “street crime.” A pen in the hand of a defrauding provider of services to the public may well be as dangerous and damaging to society as a gun in the hand of a robber. For our system to be perceived as fair, as well as to operate fairly, we must not'treat the two differently. Or, to put it more colloquially, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.”2

 “[I]t is not a function of this court to review an otherwise lawful sentence which is within the limits of the applicable statutory provisions. Such a review, if it is available, is by the Appellate Division of the Superior Court acting pursuant to G. L. c. 278, §§ 28A-28C.” Commonwealth v. Franks, 365 Mass. 74, 81 (1974).

 Ames, Baretta’s Theme (Leeds Music Corporation and Dutchess Music Corporation, Melville, New York, 1975).