The old adage that an indictment is not a conviction has never been truer following the decision of a Boston Municipal Court judge overturning the state pension authority’s ruling that suspended former Speaker of the House Sal DiMasi’s pension.
In other words, DiMasi’s pension has been reinstated – and if you read the judge’s decision – it is based on law, not on an indictment.
In restrospect, one wonders how the pension board could have suspended his pension in the first place.
The reversal allows DiMasi to receive his pension and to receive as well about $45,000 in pension funds that were withheld from him.
This is a great victory for DiMasi, who is fighting indictments which have changed his life and which have ruined his reputation.
The Sal DiMasi North Enders know and respect has not changed over the years.
The indictments for public corruption are hard to take and many, many people who voted for him from this neighborhood have stood by his side throughout this ordeal, which is nowhere near over.
DiMasi was once the most powerful man in Massachusetts at the state house.
Today, he is a vastly changed person with his public persona up for grabs.
Now that his pension has been returned to him, there is the rising belief that he may evade the indictments brought against him by the government, and that when all is said and done, he was an innocent man after all.
This would be the outcome all of us who know and who respect Sal DiMasi would hope for.
It would be a story book ending to a story book life for one of the sons of the North End who rose about as high as he could go.