The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • B3

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2012 THE BOSTON GLOBE MetrO B3 Small plane crashes on 1-93 in N.H., killing two aboard vehicles race past on the way to the plane. Before emergency vehicles arrived, Gibson said she saw two men in suits standing by the aircraft, including one who looked like Governor John Lynch. Lynch's press secretary, Colin Manning, later confirmed that Lynch had been returning from a funeral in Salem, N.H., saw the wreck, and waited there until help arrived. The incident is under investigation by the NTSB, FAA, and the state Bureau of By Sarah N. Mattero and Colin A.

Young GLOBE CORRESPONDENTS and Martin Finucane GLOBE STAFF An elderly couple from Rhode Island died when their small plane crashed Thursday on busy Interstate 93 in Hook-sett, N.H., State Police said. Herman Hassinger and his wife, Doris, both 83, of Block Island, R.I., were killed, officials said. The Hassingers were the only occupants of the plane. It was not immediately clear who was piloting the aircraft, New Hampshire State Police said. Bill Boynton, a spokesman for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, said the crash was reported around 1:15 p.m.

The plane, registered to Herman Hassinger's architectural firm, went down between Exits 10 and 11, just south of the I-93Interstate 293 split, at mile marker 26.2, he said. The aircraft, which had left Nashua and was en route to Laconia, N.H., was flying south when it struck a light pole adjacent to the highway, a preliminary investigation found, State Police said. It eventually came to rest in the high speed and adjacent breakdown lanes of I-93. State Police said Herman Hassinger was ejected from the plane. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, Hassinger was flying the same plane in 2010 when he had to execute a hard landing at Nashua Airport because of a problem with the landing gear.

In 1993, the plane was involved in a hard landing in Falmouth. According to records of the incident from the National Transportation Safety Board, a gust of wind lifted the plane just before it touched down. JONATHAN WIGGSGLOBE STAFF Island couple crash-landed on the The plane carrying a Rhode The pilot told investigators that "the airplane bounced and touched down hard again, then the nose gear collapsed and tore away from the airplane." The NTSB ruled that the pilot's "inadequate compensa highway in Hooksett, N.H. A Globe employee who was driving on 1-93 Thursday said she saw a small plane on the left side of the road and a part of its tail section. There was no fire and no smoke, Barbara Gibson said, and she saw emergency Antiabortion group endorses Brown in mailer SB TAKING A NEW PATH Melinda Marcoux walked with which provides an off-road link to the Alewife Station.

DINA RUDICKGLOBE STAFF her boxer mix, Lily, along part of the Alewife Greenway, A ceremony in Arlington Thursday marked the opening. Some lawyers doubt Bulger's claims John R. Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Sarah N. Mattero can be reached at sarah.

mattero com. Colin Young can be reached colin globe.com. Martin Finucane can be reached at Department could or ever would grant a serial killer immunity to go about the countryside killing innocent people, including two very innocent young ladies, is bizarre, to say the least." Martin G. Weinberg, another Boston attorney who, like Cardinale, was involved in court proceedings in the 1990s that dealt with Bulger and an associate's corrupt relationship with the FBI, was more measured in his response to the immunity claim. "This is a step beyond the historic legal precedent" of such a defense, Weinberg said.

"But all legal defenses begin with a single small step." He said he is not surprised Carney made the argument. "I think Jay's a very competent, experienced lawyer facing profound challenges in defending a very difficult case," he said. Travis Andersen can be reached at tandersenglobe.com. Follow him on Twitter TAGlobe. pension "Mr.

Finneran's duties as a legislator and the mandate of his oath thus gave him a heightened obligation to be forthcoming with the court, in order to enable it to make a fair decision on the questions before it," the decision stated. Finneran received pension payments in 2005 and 2006. In 2010, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld a decision that stripped Finneran of his law license. He had argued that he should retain it because he was not acting as a lawyer when he lied under oath. Peter Schworm can be reached at schwormglobe.com.

Follow him on Twitter globepete. tion for wind conditions and improper recovery from a bounced landing," along with the gusty winds, caused the hard landing. It was not clear whether Hassinger was piloting the plane during that incident. 19 murders, among a slew of other crimes. He is scheduled to stand trial in federal court in Boston this spring.

Davis questioned how such a blanket immunity agreement would benefit a federal prosecutor. "What would the government gain out of that, for him to kill all those people?" Tom Donahue, the son of Michael Donahue whom Bulger is accused of fatally shooting in 1982, dismissed the immunity claim as a stall tactic. He said he doubts that it could be a successful defense, in light of the intense publicity surrounding the case. "Not a chance in hell," Donahue said. Carney declined to comment Thursday.

The defense attorney identified O'Sullivan, who died in 2009, in a motion that he filed Wednesday requesting that US District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns recuse himself from the trial. In testimony to Congress in 2002, O'Sullivan denied ever protecting Bulger from prose US District Court to providing false testimony in a redistrict-ing lawsuit. "The facts show that the the link between Mr. Finneran's position and the offense for which he was convicted is both direct and clear," the ruling stated.

"It is irrefutable that Mr. Finneran was acting in his official capacity when he took the actions that gave rise to this conviction." Finneran would have collected a pension of almost $33,000 this year. Under the decision, Finneran will be able to recoup about $89,000 in contributions he made to the plan, but cannot receive $32,000 in accumulated interest. The Retirement Board voted The National Right to Life Committee has spent about $45,000 sending out mailers backing Sena- CAMPAIGN NOTEBOOK tor Scott Brown, even as he supports tion. Federal election law prohibits Brown from having any say over mailings sent by a political action committee.

The latest expenditure figures were reported over the last few days. Brown has received endorsements from several groups that oppose legalized abortion, in part because of his opposition to President Obama's health care law and his support for a measure that would have allowed employers and churches to restrict health coverage for treatments or procedures they find morally objectionable. His vote against Obama's health care law was unrelated to the abortion issue. A handful of groups that favor abortion rights support Elizabeth Warren, Brown's Democratic challenger. Brown has repeatedly said that he is prochoice and believes Roe v.

Wade should not be overturned. The issue has emerged several times in the campaign, both in debates and in advertisements, as the candidates fight for women's votes. "I have votes from everybody," Brown said at an event on Thursday. "I'm going after every single vote, and there are good people on all sides of every issue." The new flier shows a picture of a fetus, a baby, and an older woman and reads: "It's time to take America back for LIFE!" On the other side of the flier, it lists a comparison between the candidates on issues, including Brown's opposition to the procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion, and Warren's support from Emily's list, which the mailing characterizes as a "radical proabortion group." David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, said the group occasionally supports candidates who favor legalized abortion, including Brown in his 2010 election. "He is prochoice," O'Steen said.

"But if you look at the two candidates, Elizabeth Warren's position is very extreme. She can only be characterized as proabortion." Emily's List, apolitical action committee that supports Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights, is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Warren. The group put out a release Thursday afternoon drawing attention to the new flier from the National Right to Life Committee, asserting in a headline that "evi dence of Scott Brown's lies arrives in voters' mailboxes." FactCheck.org said last month that Emily's List was wrong to dispute Brown's assertion that he supports legalized abortion. Warren has said that she would be a more reliable supporter on women's reproductive health issues than Brown. Brown and Warren have signed a pledge designed to prevent outside groups from placing ads on television, radio, and online.

But the ad does not cover direct mail, which has flooded voters' mailboxes in recent days. NOAH BIERMAN AND STEPHANIE EBBERT National Democratic group funds an anti-Tisei TV ad A super PAC supporting Democrats is out with a new television ad attacking Republican congressional candidate Richard R. Tisei in his bid to unseat Representative John F. Tierney. "Locally, Tea Parties have been a good thing," the ad begins, as it flashes images of the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

"But in Washington, Richard Tisei called the Washington Tea Party a Godsend." The 30-second spot goes on to tie Tisei to plans to cut Medicare: "No surprise, there is a Tea Party plan that ends Medicare as we know it in exchange for giving millionaires a tax cut." Tisei, the ad declares, "called it a good starting point." The spot concludes with the line: "Richard Tisei, we can't afford to let him get started." Tisei has pointed to his legislative record and his positions on same-sex marriage, abortion, and other social issues as evidence that he is a moderate. In a debate Thursday, he called the Democrats' attempts to link him to the Tea Party ridiculous. The new ad, part of a $320,000, one-week ad buy in the Boston market, is funded by the House Majority PAC, the political action committee aimed at winning back a majority for Democrats in the US House of Representatives. The group has also rolled out new television ads in New York and Illinois. A month ago, the same committee pulled approximately $630,000 worth of ads in Boston, some of which were expected to benefit Tierney in his reelection fight against Tisei.

At the time, spokesman Andy Stone said the money would be used for other congressional races around the country. On Thursday, Stone did not say what changed the group's mind or whether it will continue to run anti-Tisei ads through Election Day. "At this point," he said, "we are keeping our options open." GLOBE STAFF Immunity deal unlikely, they say By Travis Andersen GLOBE STAFF Relatives of two people whom James "Whitey" Bulger is accused of killing three decades ago bristled Thursday at the gangster's claim that he received immunity from a federal prosecutor to wage a reign of terror that authorities say included murder and extortion. "No one gets a license to kill," said Steve Davis, the brother of Debra Davis, who was 26 in 1981 when prosecutors say Bulger strangled her. "I don't believe that one bit." Davis was reacting to a motion that Bulger's lawyer, J.W Carney filed Wednesday in which he identified former US attorney Jeremiah O'Sullivan as the official who Bulger says granted him immunity to commit crimes during the period covered in the federal indictment.

The indictment alleges that Bulger, now 83, participated in cution. Carney wrote in the motion that Bulger will testify to the immunity agreement and that defense lawyers plan to call unnamed former US Department of Justice employees to testify about their involvement in compromising investigations that targeted the gangster. In addition, Carney wrote, he plans to call other witnesses including Stearns and current FBI director Robert Mueller, both former top federal prosecutors in Boston, to testify about their failure for years to charge Bulger with any crimes, which he said could speak to an immunity agreement. The FBI and the US attorney's office declined to comment Thursday. Anthony Cardinale, a prominent Boston lawyer who has represented one of Bulger's alleged victims in civil proceedings, blasted the immunity claim in a phone interview.

"It's a ludicrous defense strategy," he said. "The thought that Jeremiah O'Sullivan or any other official of the Justice Finneran's on a recommendation from a lawyer for the state treasurer's office. Finneran's lawyer could not be reached for comment Thursday. Finneran can appeal the decision in court. In 2002, opponents of redrawn electoral districts filed a court challenge, contending that the voting power of minority voters had been diluted.

Finneran and other top state officials were named as defendants. Finneran was indicted in 2005 on a charge of providing false testimony about his involvement in the redistricting plans. Finneran was fined $25,000 and agreed not to run for office for five years. State board revokes Cites guilty plea to federal charge By Peter Schworm GLOBE STAFF The State Retirement Board ruled Thursday that Thomas M. Finneran, the former House speaker who pleaded guilty to obstructing justice in 2007, is not entitled to a government pension.

The board said that Finneran, a Democratic state representative from 1979 to 2004, forfeited his right to retirement benefits when he was convicted of a criminal offense related to his public position. Finneran pleaded guilty in.