Hopkinton's Leone prepares for Middlesex DA role
By Emelie Rutherford/Daily News staff
Sunday, December 31, 2006 - Updated: 12:10 AM EST
Hopkinton's Gerard Leone will stand in front of two judges, both friends of his, in Harvard University's Sanders Theater and be sworn in as Middlesex County's next district attorney Wednesday night.
Rewind to 1980 and Leone was a three-sport athlete and student council president in his final year at Franklin High School with one dream in his heart: to be a football coach.
A law degree would be a wise fallback the 17-year-old, whose father was a famed high school football coach, told himself at the time.
"It was always to get a law degree and coach football," Leone, now a 44-year-old father of two, said about what he wanted to be when he grew up.
"Growing up around the game of football, sports was always the way you grew up, and the coaching piece I always loved that. A law degree, I always said to myself, was (a wise thing to pursue because) I wanted the ability to do other things."
That safety option - a law degree from Suffolk University - brought Leone to a starter job running the Suffolk County district court office in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood during the height of gang activity in the late 1980s. He worked his way up through the ranks as a county, state and federal prosecutor and became accustomed to the glare of the media spotlight.
Leone prosecuted British au pair Louise Woodward in 1997 when he was an assistant district attorney in Middlesex County. He went up against state Treasury officials who schemed to steal millions of dollars when he was in the state attorney general's office around the turn of the century. And Leone famously prosecuted shoe bomber and al Qaeda terrorist Richard Reid in 2002 when he was first assistant U.S. attorney in Michael Sullivan's office.
Now that Leone is poised to take charge of prosecuting crime in the state's largest county, he said his childhood dream of coaching football isn't too far off.
"Now I kind of joke, it's kind of the best of both worlds, I get to coach my own team as a prosecutor," Leone said.
The district attorney's office is no small operation, with more than 100 assistant district attorneys divided among three regions - Framingham, Lowell and Cambridge - in the 54-community county.
Leone initially faced a crowded race for district attorney, with four state lawmakers vying for the seat last year. By April of this year all of Leone's opponents dropped out.
Outgoing Middlesex D.A. Martha Coakley, who worked closely with Leone on the Woodward case, said it was more than Leone's prosecutorial experience that helped him win.
"A good resume doesn't get you elected," Coakley said, describing Leone as earnest and hard-working. "When he has a goal he sets out to accomplish it." And wading into electoral politics and campaigning hard was no exception, she said.
Coakley, the district attorney for the past eight years, will take part in Leone's inauguration Wednesday, two weeks before she is sworn in as the state's attorney general.
Leone also will be joined on stage by his former boss, outgoing Attorney General Thomas Reilly, who was district attorney before Coakley and lost a bid for governor in September's primary.
As district attorney, Leone said he'll focus on combating juvenile crime and family-related violence, which includes elder abuse, child abuse and domestic violence.
And right off the bat he will inherit oversight of the prosecution of Neil Entwistle, the Brit charged with killing his wife and baby daughter in Hopkinton earlier this year.
Framingham Police Chief Steven Carl said Leone had a "terrific reputation" when he was the Middlesex County prosecutor in charge of the Framingham office in the mid-1990s.
"The cops love him because he's enforcement-focused," Carl said. "Victims love him because he's actually concerned about victims. The community, as far as the schools and the courthouse, they always appreciated him because of his professionalism."
State Rep. James Vallee, D-Franklin, grew up with Leone, who he called a "superstar."
"To come from a small geographical area in the county and to become district attorney in an uncontested race is really a testament to this guy's character," Vallee said. "He definitely has the talent to go far beyond this if he wants it."
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