http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/09/north-end-residents-support-dimasi/nVk490hhPA0F0FCjdKEgBK/index.htmlNorth End residents support DiMasiBy Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff
The eight-year sentence imposed on Salvatore DiMasi today prompted resignation in the North End, head-shaking, and an angry sense that the punishment for one of their own exceeded the crime.
“I think that everything stinks,” said Joseph Giangregorio, 74, as he stood behind the counter of the Green Cross Pharmacy he owns with his brother. “Sal was an honest guy. They should have taken the good and the bad and evened it out. He shouldn’t have been treated like that.”
Few people expected the former House speaker, 66, to escape federal prison after his corruption conviction. But for many of his neighbors, the evidence that DiMasi profited from a scheme to send lucrative state contracts to a favored software company paled when compared with the work he had done as the North End’s longtime representative on Beacon Hill.“I know he’s done a lot of good things. I figured he’d get three years,” said Bob Venuti, 70, as he walked near Hanover Street. “I have mixed feelings about it. I’ve known him all my life. It’s a shame it has to end like that.”
In Venuti’s view, DiMasi was punished for business as usual at the State House.
“Everybody up there does it. That becomes the norm up there,” Venuti said. “It’s wrong what they do. Change it!”
At his family-owned pizzeria, Ralph Umberto took a break from handing out slices to a line of lunchtime customers.
“To me, he’s a nice guy, and I hope he weathers it OK,” said Umberto, 54. “Eight years is kind of a long stretch, but what are you supposed to do? It’s up to the judge.”
Elsewhere in the neighborhood, conspiracy theories were plentiful. In one, DiMasi was the victim of deep-pocketed lobbyists with whom he had clashed because of his opposition to casinos. Others suggested he was fated for a long sentence because of the previous corruption convictions of former state Senator Dianne Wilkerson and City Councilor Chuck Turner.
For Michael Letichevsky, 67, a North End visitor from North Grafton, his blunt views on the sentence were not colored by years of personal connection with DiMasi.
“He deserved 12 years,” Letichevsky said, referring to the prosecution’s recommended sentence. “Corruption is corruption. Are you honest or are you corrupt? Do you know the laws or don’t you know the laws? If you do, abide by them.”
Letichevsky’s voice, however, seemed in the minority amid the afternoon bustle of Hanover Street. To many longtime residents, DiMasi’s fate was not a cause for outrage, but a cause for sadness.
“I met him at 12 o’clock last night,” only hours before his sentencing, said Fernando Giangregorio, co-owner of the Green Cross Pharmacy. “He was walking his dog, and I was walking my dog. He seemed calm. He wasn’t upset. But you could see that he was not the Sal of the old times.”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@globe.com.
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