Ins Blanchard, thirty-two, was a member of the ad hoc Canterbury School Citizens Advisory Committee. Petite but muscularly athletic at sixteen she had been a state champion gymnast; later she had graduated from Springfield College with a degree in phys ed and a certificate to teach it she was the fierce single mother of four daughters, all enrolled in Canterbury public schools Their father, Dave, a heavy equipment operator, had found winter work in Louisiana two years before but failed to return from it in the spring as promised, or remit any money for support. His whereabouts remained unknown. Unable to secure a position as a gym teacher, she kept the mortgage current on the house resentfully using money she'd inherited from a grandmother and earmarked for the girls' education, supporting them meagerly with her earnings as an instructor in aerobics in the Canterbury Spa and Health Club. Earlier that evening she had angrily expressed her considerable fury at rejection of a school budget item of $113,000 earmarked to restore art, music and drama to the curricula in all grades and establish a full varsity athletic program, including gymnastics, for girls at Canterbury High. When Sal's Blazer item passed she came to her feet enraged and shouting: "Oh you filthy rotten bastards."
Ruled out of order by the moderator, Mason Turner, the forbidding grey-haired senior loan officer at the Pioneer Trust Co." she ignored repeated blows of the gavel and refused to sit down. She called the selectmen 'nothing but a bunch of lowdown dirty cop-suckers," bringing some startled laughter and scattered applause, 'approving extravagant new toys for the Paradise gestapo instead of doing what's right by the kids."
Scattered cheering broke out, countered at once by booing and shouts of'Ah sid down ya big-mouth bitch." When she again failed to heed the gavel declaring "I'll talk as much as I want, assholes' and the moderator's fourth order to be silent, calling him 'a damned lickspittle for that gang of spineless clowns," Turner ordered the policeman on duty, Ptl. Greg Morrison, to escort her from the building.
She at first ignored Morrison's purposive approach and his gently regretful statement, "Fraid I'll have to ask you to come along now, Ma'am," instead yelling: "Oh sure, Turner, pompous old fart, calling Sal's goons to the rescue." Then she turned and snarled at Morrison:
"Get away from me, you jerk."
He extended his left hand toward her. "Intending," as he testified before Judge Cavanaugh a month later in Commonwealth v. Blanchard, 'since she had indicated that she would not come with me voluntarily, to place it firmly on her right shoulder, in order to lead her away."
She grabbed his wrist with both hands and bit him on the joint of the thumb and the fold of flesh between it and the forefinger, chomping down so that she broke the skin, tore the flesh and drew blood. After Morrison had subdued her with the help of an off-duty policewoman, Ptl.
Connie Foley, a recreational boxer, who piston-punched Blanchard hard three times in the solar plexus and placed her under arrest to be transported to the station and locked up, he was driven to the emergency room at Holyoke Hospital for nine stitches and a painful series of precautionary shots to guard against blood poisoning and infection.
"Not that we think she's rabid," the nurse with the big needle told him, 'but human bites're the worst kind, when it comes to infection."
"I've heard that," the cop said, 'heard that many times. I don't need to be convinced JesusmotherfuckingChrist! you hit the goddamn bone again. Is this your first time doing this or is it you don't like my looks?"
At trial, Officer Morrison further testified that doctors had told him he would have to wear the white plastic prosthetic device specially moulded to immobilize his left hand for at least six more weeks, in order to allow damaged cartilage to heal and see whether a torn tendon would mend without surgery. If x-rays showed that the tendon had mended, he could expect to spend between one and two months in rehabilitation. If the x-rays showed the tendon had not repaired itself, he would require surgery and rehabilitation and about a year to recover full use of his left hand.
Officer Morrison testified that since he was left-handed, the prosthesis prevented him from gripping his sidearm or baton, writing incident reports or using the two-way radio in his patrol car while underway, since to do so would require him to depend upon his unusable left hand to steer while operating the radio with his right. He said that as a result he had been on total disability ever since the incident and expected to remain off-duty for at least three more months.
After the trial, jury-waived, on a pretty afternoon in April, Iris Blanchard was found guilty by Judge Leonard Cavanaugh on charges of disrupting a public meeting; disorderly conduct; making an affray; assault on a police officer; assault and battery with a deadly weapon to wit: teeth; resisting arrest; and mayhem.
"These are very serious charges, Mrs. Blanchard," the judge said, Merrion having briefed him about what the cops were saying at the station and around the courthouse about noisy female politicians who bit cops to dramatize their advocacy of children's issues and their own obvious interest in creating new teaching jobs. "If you think there's something funny or endearing in what your lawyer's tried to minimize as this "feistiness" of yours, I assure you I do not. And if you should appeal this verdict, as you certainly have every right to do, my guess is any judge and jury you may get in the superior court will agree with me not you. Or your lawyer, either. Same when it comes to sentencing:
You've given any judge deciding what to do with you several excellent reasons to do as the police prosecutor here's suggested: send you down to Framingham for a year or so, to reflect on what you did.
"And in fact I am going to sentence you to the women's correctional institution," the judge said, 'not for a year and a day, as the prosecutor's recommended, but for five full years." Iris Blanchard had been striving to hide signs of secret amusement, trying to appear contrite; now she flinched visibly and gasped. Her lawyer, Maxine Golden from the Mass. Defenders, moved closer beside her and put a reassuring hand on her arm.
"What you did wasn't funny. And I've been very much concerned by your debonair demeanor, the way you've behaved in this court. Also by some rather light-hearted statements that your lawyer's made in questioning the witness," Golden's eyebrows lifted, 'suggesting to me that deep down inside you believe it was mischief you did, some sort of amusing prank.
"It was not. This was a bad and serious thing that you did. It was also extremely dangerous. For someone serving on a school committee, supposedly concerned with the education and development of children, you set one lousy example. You have to (I pay for your actions. Not literally, of course: there isn't any point in fining you a substantial amount, say several thousand dollars, as the statues would allow me; that would only be another way of sending you to jail, because you clearly couldn't pay."
Blanchard gasped again and then began to sob, putting her hands to her face. Golden put her arm around her. "So I'm in a dilemma, Mrs.
Blanchard, which I do not like, and I blame you for putting me in it. I think you need a severe lesson, but at the same time I'm aware you have young children and appear to be their only source of parental support.
So I know you've been under a lot of pressure, and I'm willing to take that into account.
"You have to understand that you've put someone else now under pressure, terrible pressure. Officer Morrison's also a young parent.