Former Massachusetts prosecutor: Don’t pardon Mark Wahlberg

BOSTON (AP) — A former prosecutor in Massachusetts says Mark Wahlberg shouldn’t be pardoned for an attack as a youth on two Asian men.

Judith Beals is a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general who argued against a pardon in an opinion piece published this week in The Boston Globe.

She told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that Wahlberg has not acknowledged the racial element of his crimes and has focused instead on his heavy drug and alcohol use at the time.

Beals secured a civil rights injunction against a young Wahlberg in a separate case accusing him of hurling rocks and racial epithets at black schoolchildren in Boston.

Wahlberg’s request in the separate case was filed with the state in November. He seeks a pardon for hitting a Vietnamese man in the head with a wooden stick while trying to steal alcohol and punching another in the face while trying to avoid police in 1988. He served about 45 days in jail.