To the editor:
Michael Mah’s recent letter to the editor demonstrates that he is seriously ill-informed about the background and experience of district attorney candidate Timothy J. Shugrue. Mah claims that most of Shugrue’s career has been spent in divorce court, not criminal court.
That is laughable. Shugrue does indeed have a significant practice in the Probate and Family Court because clients recognize his abilities and his services are very much in demand. However, the first eight years of his career were spent in prosecutors’ offices, where he tried many serious and complex felonies. For example, in 1993 he prosecuted a bus driver from Lanesborough and convicted him of raping 6-year-old children on a school bus, which resulted in two consecutive life sentences. He prosecuted many sex crimes while he was a member of the Hampden District Attorneys’s sex crimes unit. At a recent debate, Mah’s preferred candidate, Andrea Harrington, was unable to name even three important cases which she personally tried. Two months ago, she brought in a special prosecutor from Springfield to try a murder case, because she was too inept and inexperienced to try it herself. Mah’s suggestion that Shugrue lacks experience in criminal trials is ludicrous.
Mah’s argument that Shugrue was never promoted during his career as a prosecutor is equally absurd. In 1991, District Attorney Gerard Downing recruited Shugrue away from the Hampden District Attorney’s Office because he needed a talented and experienced prosecutor to handle the backlog of sexual assault cases in his office. Shugrue did an excellent job, and was on track to rise even further in the ranks before he decided to leave and open his own law practice. 
Mah rather snidely suggests that his practice consists of “pleading out drunk drivers.” That claim ignores the fact that in the last 30 days, Shugrue tried and won three drunk driving cases against Harrington’s supposedly crack prosecutors. Shugrue has in recent years also tried and won far more serious cases in the Superior Court, such as an armed robbery in 2019 culminating in a not guilty verdict. That is a claim that Harrington cannot hope to make.
The contrast between these two individuals is stark, and it should be plain to any fair minded person that Shugrue is the superior candidate. Mah’s attempt to re-write history by denigrating Shugrue’s wealth of trial experience is completely off the mark.
Julie Lewit
Lenox
