Analysis: Soldiers' Home Justice Is a Bigger Project Than Two Defendants' Sentences…
Nearly four years after the shroud of the coronavirus fell upon Holyoke and the then-Soldiers’ Home, its final legal drama has apparently concluded. The only two people to face criminal charges from the outbreak changed their pleas, essentially throwing themselves upon the mercy of the court. A judge obliged. Former superintendent Bennett Walsh and former medical director David Clinton received three months of probation.
The COVID-19 outbreak at the Soldiers’ Home that claimed at least 76 lives was perhaps the 413’s defining pandemic trauma. Families of the dead understandably blasted Superior Court Judge Edward McDonough’s sentencing. The state, the Soldiers Home and their leaders utterly betrayed the trust families placed in one of this region’s most hallowed institutions. Behind that are failures of oversight and the grubbiness of state political calculations that require active efforts to prevent another tragedy.