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At Start Of New Term, Berkshire DA Highlights Community Outreach And Opiate Epidemic

Jim Levulis
/
WAMC

Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless marked the start of his third full term Tuesday afternoon, taking the oath of office at Berkshire Superior Court in Pittsfield. Over the past year, the Democrat’s office secured three life sentences in a gruesome 2011 triple murder.Berkshire Juvenile Court Justice Joan McMenemy administered the oath of office to David Capeless before a crowd of law enforcement leaders.

“I pledge to continue to serve the public insuring that justice is obtained in a manner that is both fair and even-handed, holding the guilty accountable while protecting the innocent and preserving the dignity of victims and their families,” Capeless said. “I fully expect you will all hold me to that pledge.”

Over the past year, Capeless and his office tried Adam Lee Hall, David Chalue and Caius Veivois in separate trials for the murders of David Glasser, Edward Frampton and Robert Chadwell in one the highest-profile Berkshire County cases in recent memory. Their dismembered bodies were found in Becket two weeks after they disappeared from a Pittsfield apartment in August 2011. Despite no identified crime scene, weapons or forensic evidence directly linking the defendants, all three were found guilty and are serving life in prison. Berkshire County Sheriff Tom Bowler called it the most thorough investigation in county history. Capeless says the cases demonstrated the effectiveness of the county’s Law Enforcement Task Force, which involves local, state and federal investigators.

“Investigators worked tirelessly for countless hours, conducted thousands of interviews, collected several thousand pieces of evidence and assembled a compelling case that allowed me and my staff to convince freer juries beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the three defendants and to bring justice to the families and friends of the victims,” said Capeless.

Capeless says his office goes beyond prosecution, highlighting its community outreach programs based in all of the county’s public schools with focuses on cyber safety, substance abuse and safe and healthy relationships.

“Our strategy for long-term prevention has evolved over the past decade,” Capeless said. “We’ve gone from dealing with the negative to reinforcing the positive among our youth. Programming now focuses on social and emotional learning teaching empathy, emotional management and social problem solving skills.”

Capeless says while law enforcement will continue to go after and prosecute drug dealers, those falling victim to the opiate epidemic need to be addressed by societal means. He called for further legislation making prescription monitoring programs mandatory to decrease how often doctors provide painkillers and offering insurance coverage for month-long treatment plans.

“We have to change the way doctors are doing their business,” Capeless said. “We have to change the way that the insurance companies are doing their business because they’re the ones that are going to allow these people to actually get access to that treatment. We’re also going to have to make the treatment available and it’s going to have to be paid for. This is something we’re going to have to live up to.”

Sheriff Bowler says the county is piecing together an in-house treatment program for incarcerated addicts.

“We have to sit down with the judges, court personnel and probation so that we can possibly come up with some type of alternative sentencing for these individuals,” said Bowler.

Bowler says a pre-trial treatment initiative will be launched in the next few weeks. With 80 percent of the office's budget devoted to salaries, Capeless says an unmet goal is more money to pay his 54 staff members including 20 fellow prosecutors.

“Statutory minimum is $37,500,” Capeless said. “We pay as a minimum $40,000 to start with and they go up. But, it’s nothing compared to what they would make if they were in private practice; much less, as I say, in other governmental lawyer positions.”

A prosecutor for 32 years, Capeless started with the Berkshire County District Attorney’s office as assistant DA in 1991. He is a Pittsfield native and son of former city mayor Robert Capeless.

Jim is WAMC’s Associate News Director and hosts WAMC's flagship news programs: Midday Magazine, Northeast Report and Northeast Report Late Edition. Email: jlevulis@wamc.org
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