Edward F. Harrington

Harrington was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. He graduated from Sacred Heart Grammar School in 1947, from B.M.C. Durfee High School in 1951 with high honors. He was the recipient of Durfee High School's Distinguished Alumni Award in 1995. His grandfather, Edward F. Harrington was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. His father, John J. Harrington, taught at B.M.C. Durfee High School for over forty years (1929-1970). His mother, Elizabeth C. (Tolan) Harrington, was a grammar school teacher (1923-1932; 1956-1970).

Harrington graduated in cursu honoris, cum laude with an Artium Baccalaureus from College of the Holy Cross in 1955 and with a Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School in 1960. At Holy Cross, Harrington was a member of the Naval ROTC. At Boston College Law School, he was on the Dean's List and a member of the Law Review. He became a member of the Massachusetts Bar in 1960.

He served on active duty in the United States Navy from 1955 to 1957 on destroyer escorts as the gunnery officer, and was a Lieutenant Junior Grade. He was in the United States Navy Reserve from 1957 to 1972. He was a law clerk to the Honorable Paul C. Reardon, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court from 1960 to 1961.[1][2]

He married Ellen Mary Erisman on July 27, 1957. They had six children and twenty-three grandchildren.[3] Ellen graduated from the College of New Rochelle in 1955 with a Baccalavrei In Artibus in Sociology and was named to Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities. She attended Fordham University School of Social Work from 1955-1957. She was employed by the Foundling Hospital in New York City, specializing in adoptions, from 1955-1957, and later worked for Catholic Charities in Boston from 1957-1958. She died on October 28, 2014. Ellen and Edward had been married for fifty-seven years.

He was a trial attorney in the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. from 1961-65. While at the Department of Justice, Harrington was a member of the special prosecution group conducting the nationwide probe of racketeering in the Teamsters Union. As one of the fifteen members of Robert F. Kennedy's so-called "Hoffa Squad", he investigated illegalities in James Hoffa's Teamsters Union. During the so-called "long hot summer of 1964," Harrington was a member of a select team of attorneys dispatched to the State of Mississippi by Attorney General Robert Kennedy to protect the civil rights workers who were conducting "freedom schools" in voter registration there. During this assignment, he was involved in the grand jury investigation of the murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi during that summer.

He was an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1965 to 1969. In that capacity, he participated in the successful prosecution of Raymond L.S. Patriarca, the alleged boss of the New England organized crime family, in 1968 for interstate racketeering. The chief government witness in the Patriarca case, Joseph Barboza, was one of the first organized crime figures to break the "code of silence." The security procedures used to protect accomplice witness Barboza formed the basis for the Witness Protection Program, which was formally established by the U.S. Congress in 1970.

In 1968, Harrington was an advisor to the National Commission on Violence and from 1974 to 1976 was a consultant to the Commission on the National Policy toward Gambling.

In 1969, Harrington became the Deputy Attorney In Charge of the newly-created U.S. Department of Justice's Strike Force against Organized Crime for the New England area and was the Attorney In Charge from 1970 to 1973. During this period, major gangland accomplice witnesses, such as Vincent C. Teresa and John J. Kelley, were developed. Their testimony resulted in the convictions of numerous significant underworld figures. Teresa was the chief witness in 1971 before the Permanent Senate Subcommittee investigating organized criminal securities fraud in the Wall Street brokerage houses. The "Strike Force" installed the first court-authorized wiretap in the District of Massachusetts in 1970.

From 1973 to 1977, Harrington was in private practice in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 1974, he was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for Attorney General of Massachusetts. He was defeated by Francis X. Bellotti in the primary election, where he finished third in a six-person race.[4]

In 1975, he was appointed by Governor Michael S. Dukakis as Chairman of the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, in which capacity he served until January 1977.

In 1976, Harrington was the Massachusetts Co-Chairman of the Sargent Shriver Campaign for President.

In August 1977, Harrington was appointed by President Carter as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. During his term, the United States Attorney's Office successfully prosecuted members of the Boston School Committee and initiated grand jury investigations into corruption in Boston City Hall, resulting in the conviction of several municipal political figures. The Office also assisted the Ward Commission, which had been established by the State Legislature, in its probe of corruption in the awarding of state construction contracts and its reform of the awarding process. The Office's investigation resulted in the conviction of a member of the State Senate. See, In Re United States, Petitioner 666Fed.2d690 (1st Cir. 1981)], a Petition for a Writ of Mandamus filed by the United States seeking the Court of Appeals to order the trial judge to recuse himself from the case. Petition was denied. However, a new trial judge was reassigned to the case upon remand to the District Court. During his term as U.S. Attorney, five members of the notorious "Winter Hill Gang" were convicted in the so-called "Horse Race Fix" case of 1979, including its leader, Howie Winter. The Office supervised the planting of the court-authorized "bugging" of the headquarters of the Boston organized crime family in 1980, which resulted in the successful prosecution and demise of the Angiulo organized criminal organization. James "Whitey" Bulger was one of the confidential informants supporting the affidavit submitted to the Court.

The U.S. Attorney's Office was involved in the landmark Turkette case in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981 construed the term "enterprise" in the RICO statute to include illegal, as well as legal, enterprises.

As U.S. Attorney, he served as a member of the United States Attorney General's Advisory Committee of United States Attorneys from 1977 to 1980, and coordinated the security arrangements for Pope John Paul II's visit to Boston in 1979. Harrington left the U.S. Attorney's Office in November 1981, and entered the private practice of law with Sheridan, Garrahan and Lander with offices in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he was engaged in trial practice.

In 1986, he was the Republican Party's candidate for Attorney General of Massachusetts, but he lost in the general election to Democrat James Shannon, 55% to 45%.[5][1]

In 2002, Harrington testified for the defense in the federal RICO trial of FBI agent John J. Connolly, and again in 2008 in the Florida state murder trial of Connolly, who was convicted of second degree murder for assisting James "Whitey" Bulger. In both cases, Harrington's testimony related to Connolly's contribution to the decimation of the New England Mafia.[6]

On September 18, 1987, Harrington was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated by Judge Andrew Augustine Caffrey. Harrington was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 19, 1988 and received his commission on February 22, 1988. He assumed senior status on March 1, 2001. He was a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States Committee on the Administration of the Bankruptcy System from 1992 to 1999 and again from 2005 to 2011.

Harrington helped shape the novel "fraud on the market" doctrine in security fraud cases, adopted the controversial use of "repressed memory" in sexual abuse cases, formulated the scholastic standards required of learning-disabled students in private schools, required standards for public school teachers and due diligence for federal regulators of the fishing industry, fashioned discovery rules for electronic documents, and upheld the supremacy of the cell-phone tower statute over local zoning regulations.

He participated in many major patent cases involving significant inventions in the medical, electronic, and communication fields, and applied the anti-trust theory to "buy-out" companies’ conspiring to depress the value of corporations intended to be acquired. His opinions in McGuire v. Reilly resolved the contentious confrontations between pro-life protesters and abortion clinic employees outside a Brookline abortion clinic by imposing on equal protection grounds the same counseling restrictions on both adversaries.

Harrington was an early critic of the mandatory Sentencing Commission Guidelines, criticizing them for their inflexibility and severity. As Senior Judge, he declined to hear criminal cases based on his conviction that the Guidelines infringed the sentencing judge's traditional discretion See U.S. v. SIDHOM, 144F.SUPP.2d.41 (2001)]. The United States Supreme Court ultimately rendered the Guidelines discretionary, rather than mandatory, and he resumed trying criminal cases. His article "The Metaphorical Wall" on the separation of Church and State was published in America, the national Jesuit magazine, on January 17, 2005. Its theme was that the First Amendment is a prohibition against government, not religion, and fully protects religious exercise and speech.

Harrington served as both U.S. Attorney and U.S. District Judge for the federal District of Massachusetts, a distinction held by only six other individuals since the District was established in 1789.

Since 2015, Harrington has been conducting mediation hearings in the District Court's ADR Program.

He was presented with the 2019 Edward Bennett Williams '41 Lifetime Achievement Award] by the Holy Cross Lawyers Association for distinguished service to the legal profession and devotion to the College.

A few reflections:

He had a simple judicial philosophy: "I had no agenda other than to try to resolve disputes justly and expeditiously under established principles of law."

"A judge should always be acutely conscious that judicial power is vested in the office, and not in himself, and that he occupies the office for a brief time only."

"A judge is like an umpire: a neutral arbiter, fair and impartial; controls the proceedings, but remains inconspicuous; and seeks due process and a just result for the parties (players). A case is conducted by the judge in the interest of the parties, and not for the convenience of the court."

"The purpose of the law lies less in subtle thought and rhetorical eloquence than in achieving fair and honest conduct, conduct which respects the equal rights of all persons."

"Law delineates the boundary between the exercise of power and the exercise of individual rights. Power without law is despotism; rights without law is anarchy. Law maintains the balance between repression and license, that is ordered liberty."

"A person lives in society and society must be governed to maintain order and to protect the rights of the people. Law defines governmental power and, thus, enlarges personal rights; law prescribes personal rights and, thus, limits governmental power. Liberty and law are but two sides of the same coin. Persons are able to exercise their personal rights seeking to live a free, responsible and full life in society only under law."

"Morality is the juris prudential foundation of the law. Morality is reason reflecting on human nature and acting in accordance with its dictate to seek to perfect itself by doing what is good, fair, honest and just."

"We should seek the truth, follow our conscience, and develop our potential so as to make a contribution to society, which provides us the resources necessary to live a full live."

"A full life consists of a close family, good friends, a worthy task to spend the day, a good book to enrich the mind, an avocation to refresh the spirit, and faith in God's mercy."

"Life, like the movies, is a collaborative endeavor. My wife Ellen was my collaborator in every aspect of our lives together. She had a serene manner, a generous heart, inner strength, sound judgement, and a deep faith. She was accomplished in the many projects she undertook, including gardening, interior design and decoration, fashion, finances and investments. She created an environment of beauty and joy. To her children she remains their guide and an inspiration. Grief over her loss has not been cured by time. My children have alleviated the pain of loss by including me in their lives."

[1][7]

• Edward Francis Harrington at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.