Au Pair Judge Remains in Glare of Publicity

He has been vilified and venerated, called the savior of the justice system and its curse.

Judge Hiller Zobel still gets an average of 100 letters a day from admirers and critics. His staff was forced to disconnect the office fax machine and deflect the flood of phone calls to the building switchboard. He even has stopped riding the public trolley to work.

Although Zobel’s involvement in the Louise Woodward legal saga is probably over, he can’t seem to shake the notoriety that went along with allowing a British au pair to go free in the death of an 8-month-old boy in her care.

In newspaper columns, talk shows and Internet chat sites, judging the judge has become a part of popular culture.

One columnist, Andrea Peyser of the New York Post, called him “a man so clearly influenced by publicity as to be unworthy of sitting on a piano bench,” and “the second coming of Lance Ito”--the judge who presided over the acquittal of O.J. Simpson.

A Boston sports-radio host even joked that Judge Zobel was the only hope after the New England Patriots’ embarrassing loss on the football field to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“If it’s going to be a win,” said host Will McDonough, “we need Judge Zobel to reverse the decision.”

Prosecutors said Woodward, 19, fatally shook the baby in frustration with her job and slammed his head into a hard object Feb. 4. He died five days later. Defense attorneys contended that the injuries were there before.

While he agreed that Woodward “was a little rough with” the baby, Zobel decided that her actions were the consequence of inexperience, frustration, confusion, immaturity and some anger, but not malice. He reduced a jury’s second-degree murder verdict to involuntary manslaughter and sentenced her to the 279 days she had spent in jail--in effect, setting her free.

“Thank You Judge Zobel,” read a handmade banner put up in Woodward’s home town of Elton, England.

Closer to home, the reaction has not been as kind.

“The truth is, to liberal judges like you, the victim is dead and forgotten,” read one of the letters to the judge, from Massachusetts State Rep. Donna Fournier Cuomo.

Cameras have followed his arrival at and departure from the courthouse.

But Zobel has ruled out commenting on the Woodward case. Ever.

“My mother taught me never say never, but I won’t have anything to say about this case,” he told Boston’s WHDH-TV after his decision. “Maybe on my deathbed, if someone asks me about the Woodward trial, I’ll say something.”

In his ruling, Zobel apparently anticipated the response to come.

“Judges must follow their oaths and do their duty, heedless of editorials, letters, telegrams, pickets, threats, petitions, panelists and talk shows,” he wrote.

An expected appeal will drop the case of the convicted au pair into the lap of some other judge.