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State Official Defends Mandatory Sentencing

By persuading the trial court to assign more judges to his district and transforming trailers into courtrooms, Sullivan said, they were able to reduce the average time between arraignment and trial from over a year to a matter of weeks.

The most poignant moment of Sullivan's talk came when a student asked him about the most difficult case on which he'd ever worked.

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He spoke of the search for Melissa Gosule, a substitute teacher whose car broke down on Cape Cod. She accepted assistance and a ride from Michael Gentile, who was later arrested for her murder and convicted in May.

"You get to know the victims in murder cases after the fact," Sullivan said. "Your heart really breaks for [the family] because even if you're able to successfully prosecute the person, you think about the big whole in their life that they're going to have."

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