TITLE: n/a
LENGTH: 30 seconds.
AIRING: Began airing Monday on broadcast and cable stations statewide.
PAID BY: Michigan Democratic Party.
SCRIPT: The narrator says: "Mary Beth Kelly says she feels really bad. An illegal alien in and out of the juvenile court system for violent behavior and selling crack. He was never deported or put in jail until he brutally carjacked and executed a man. And one judge oversaw it all. One judge did not put him in jail or have him deported. Judge Mary Beth Kelly just led him through the revolving door despite warning signs. She says she feels really bad. We do, too."
KEY IMAGES: The ad has a series of headlines and newspaper stories about Ihab Maslamani, who was convicted of snatching Matt Landry outside a Macomb County sandwich shop and killing him at a Detroit drug house.
The ad starts and ends with a message on the screen, "I feel really badly...," a quote attributed to Kelly in The Detroit News in August 2009 when Maslamani, then 17, was arrested.
ANALYSIS: Kelly, a Wayne County judge, is a Republican nominee for the Michigan Supreme Court.
The ad attempts to blame Kelly for a brutal homicide that received widespread publicity in the Detroit area when it occurred last year. Maslamani was convicted on Oct. 1.
At the time of the killing, Maslamani had disappeared from a juvenile placement center. Even his lawyer at the time said he had an extensive record as a juvenile.
Judges like Kelly don't have authority to put a juvenile in "jail" or order deportation. Kelly says she wasn't the only judge who had some dealings with Maslamani.
She says any disappointment expressed to the newspaper was intended to reflect all that had been done to try to rehabilitate Maslamani in the juvenile justice system. By seeing her quote in the ad, however, viewers may feel that she feels personally responsible for Landry's death.
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Analysis by Associated Press Writer Ed White in Detroit.
Published: Wed, Oct 27, 2010
