It's too late for another investigation into whether Amy Bishop killed her brother by accident or on purpose when she fired a shotgun into his chest in 1986, says Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory. But Gov. Deval Patrick should appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate whether local and state authorities were corrupt or completely incompetent in the way they rushed to exonerate Bishop of criminal responsibility in the death of her 18-year-old brother, Seth, McGrory says.
Bishop, a 44-year-old neurobiology professor, allegedly shot and killed three colleagues at a faculty meeting on Friday after she was not granted tenure. When she killed her brother in Massachusetts, she and her mother said it was an accident, and she was not charged. Throw in the fact that Bishop was a suspect in a failed 1993 mail bombing and that she once punched out a fellow diner at a pancake house, no one needs a flow chart to show how the Alabama massacre might have been prevented, McGrory says.
