Elizabeth D. Scheibel
When Elizabeth D. Scheibel—Betsy to her family, friends and colleagues—was growing up in the college town of South Hadley, Massachusetts, her mother never thought she’d become a lawyer, much less the first elected woman district attorney in the state. She thought it was more likely that her tomboyish sports-loving daughter would be a professional baseball player.
“Yes,” admits Scheibel, DA of the two-county Northwest District of Massachusetts, “I was a real tomboy and loved all boys’ sports, but especially baseball. I played third base on a Little League-type boys’ team … and I played football with the boys in neighborhood pick-up games (preferring tackle football to touch football), and I also played softball and swam competitively in school.” A lawyer friend who has known her since kindergarten remembered how she beat up a bully who was picking on her younger brother, commenting, “Even in her youth she wasn’t afraid to hold her position and pursue justice as she saw it.”
Scheibel was 19 and attending Mount Holyoke College in her hometown, majoring in psychobiology and bent on a career in animal husbandry, when fate—and romance—intervened. She signed up for an introductory law course taught by a charismatic lawyer, Paul Boudreau, then 27. As a story on her in the Boston Globe recounts, she initially was more attracted to Boudreau than to the law, but “her interest in both, and her interest in pursuing them, grew.”
She switched to law and after graduation from Mount Holyoke College attended the Western New England College of Law, where she received her law degree in 1980, and was hired by then Northern District DA Judd Carhart to be one of his assistants. In 1981, she and Boudreau were married and in 1988, Carhart named her his first assistant. When Carhart was appointed to a state superior court judgeship in 1993, then Governor William Weld appointed Scheibel to succeed him for the remainder of Carhart’s unexpired term. She was elected to a full four-year term in 1994 and has been re-elected ever since.
Today DA Scheibel supervises a staff of approximately 100 that includes 28 to 30 attorneys and a state police detective investigative unit in her two-county (Hampshire and Franklin) jurisdiction (population: approximately 240,000). Her jurisdiction includes five colleges and universities and encompasses a demographic diversity that ranges from very affluent areas to severely economically depressed areas hit hard by the closing and/or departure of manufacturing plants.
Domestic violence and child abuse, especially child sexual assault cases, are the principal crime problems in her jurisdiction. She concentrates on these areas, plus elder abuse and violence against disabled persons—the latter one of her special interests, inspired by a high-profile eastern Massachusetts case involving the torture of two mentally retarded brothers by their two older brothers.
Appalled by this case and suspicious that there were many similar cases going undetected, Scheibel spearheaded a statewide initiative that she says “reviewed the way we look at crimes committed against persons with disabilities, the first of its kind in the country. As a result we overhauled our entire reporting system and the way we investigate and prosecute these cases.”
“It has been amazing,” she reports, “to change the mind-set on this issue. We have every DA’s office involved in the program and every state human service agency that works with disabled persons and the advocacy groups have signed on. We’ve had a 2,000 percent increase in the number of cases we’ve seen as the result of the initiative and it’s not that more crimes are occurring. It’s just that as a result of this program we’re doing a better job of reporting them and investigating and prosecuting them, with better outcomes. I’m going to pitch this approach to other DAs around the country.”
Scheibel, an NDAA board member, takes seriously a DA’s role as community leader, declaring, “Education is the key to reducing crime, and we’re very lucky to be in a jurisdiction that welcomes community involvement by the DA’s office. We do it in the area of elder crime prevention, child abuse, domestic violence and crimes against persons with disabilities. We have a civil rights board and a number of task forces and advisory boards that work out of this office to get residents involved in these issues.”
Because of her administrative duties, DA Scheibel has not personally tried cases in several years. The most recent cases she prosecuted were major murder cases (so far her district fortunately hasn’t had many murders) and she won convictions in both. She says she believes her strong point is preparation. She recalls that a judge once told her that she would rather have in her courtroom a brand-new lawyer who is 90 to 100 percent prepared than one who has been around a long time but isn’t prepared, because the well-prepared lawyer will do better every time.
In the fall of 1996 Scheibel, at 40, faced a personal crisis. After a series of tests that followed a mammogram, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent surgery for removal of the tumor, followed by an energy-draining program of radiation and chemotherapy. During this difficult period, her antidote was devotion to her job. “Everyone reacts differently,” she told a reporter at the time, “but this worked for me.” She’s now fully recovered.
Asked if her experience with cancer had changed her outlook on life, Scheibel replied with a laugh, “I wish it had changed my outlook on work, but that hasn’t changed at all.”
She added: “I think, if anything, as a public figure and someone whose cancer was out there for everyone to know about, it has given me the opportunity to help other women go through it. I get calls all the time from women who are going through it. I received help and information and it’s nice to be able, in turn, to give it to someone else.”
One of the unique aspects of Betsy Scheibel’s life and career is that she has never really left home or strayed far from her roots. While growing up in South Hadley, she worked at a local restaurant, sold sweaters in a local clothing store, graduated from South Hadley High School and received her bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College, which is in South Hadley. She has been surrounded by friends and classmates all her life. Some 800 of them turned out to see her sworn in as DA in 1993, in the same place she and Boudreau were married: at Mount Holyoke College.
Asked why she loves her job, Scheibel starts by recalling how a Japanese woman had come into her office on the morning after her 32-year-old daughter and 17-month-old grandson had been murdered by her daughter’s boyfriend, and asked, “What can I do to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else?”
Scheibel recalls, “Something like this had never happened to me before or since. I was amazed.”
Scheibel and the Japanese woman, who herself had been a victim of domestic abuse, formed a bond and worked on domestic issues. They lectured around the state and in Japan, where, Scheibel says, the woman, “has revolutionized the way Japan is now looking at domestic violence.”
Scheibel sums up:
“I feel that I make a difference in someone’s life every single day, and now that I’m a little removed from actually being in court so often, I believe that the people I have representing me in court and representing this office are making a difference every day.
“The other part of it is that I can give a voice to those who can’t speak for themselves and provide an opportunity for someone like this Japanese woman, who is now devoting her life to fighting domestic violence back in Japan. When I see what she went through and what she is doing, that’s what keeps me doing this job.”
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