Prosecutor: Don't Pardon Mark Wahlberg

Movie star and Boston native Mark Wahlberg sought out a pardon last December for a crime he committed in the late-1980s.

The actor and former rapper attacked a middle-aged Vietnamese man on Dorchester Avenue in 1988 and filed an application with the Massachusetts Board of Pardons in hopes of erasing the crime from his record. He considers the pardon formal recognition because of his charity work through the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dorchester.

Wahlberg was arrested and initially charged with attempted murder for the attack, although it was later reduced to criminal contempt with a maximum sentence of 10 years. After pleading guilty, he was given a two-year sentence at the Deer Island House of Correction in Boston but only had to serve 45 days in the correctional facility.

The Daily Mail reported in mid-December that the case victim Hoa “Johnny” Trinh forgives the “Ted” star for his actions.

Now the attorney who prosecuted Wahlberg has come forward to announce her viewpoint.

Judith Beals, who was an assistant attorney general during the 1988 incident, wrote an editorial for the Boston Globe on Monday, stating that the actor “has never acknowledged the racial nature of his crimes.”

“Even his pardon petition describes his serial pattern of racist violence as a ‘single episode’ that took place while he was ‘under the influence of alcohol and narcotics,’” she continued. “For a community that continues to confront racism and hate crime, we need acknowledgment and leadership, not denial.”

One of Wahlberg’s victims from an earlier incident also told the Globe that she doesn’t believe he should be pardoned.

“For him to try to get it overturned and make it seem like it never happened? I don’t think that’s fair,” said Kristyn Atwood, who was on a school field trip in Dorchester in 1986 when three boys yelled racial slurs and threw rocks at her and a black classmate.

One of the boys was Wahlberg, according to court records. The state’s attorney general filed a civil complaint against him and his friends, which was dismissed in 1987.

Atwood, who now lives in Georgia, was not aware that one of the teens who harassed her and her classmate was Wahlberg.

“When people talk about racism in Boston, I always remember that,” she said.

The Board of Pardons still needs to investigate the petition and decide if it warrants a public hearing before it is recommended to Governor Charlie Baker. If the governor approves, it still needs to get the approval of the governor’s council.

“Truth and reconciliation are all important in moving forward, but not a public wiping of the record,” Judith Beals wrote at the end of her Boston Globe opinion piece. “Not now when hate crime remains so high in Boston; not now when tension remains acute over the unpunished killings of black men at the hands of unaccountable white men.”

Image courtesy of Cummings Photography in Framingham for a Patch story in August.

For more on Mark Wahlberg:

Mark Wahlberg Seeks Pardon in ‘80s Assault Case

Victim from 1988 Mark Wahlberg Case Speaks Out