John Kivlan ’72, a much-admired Massachusetts prosecutor perhaps best known for his conviction of the gunman whose attacks on health centers in Brookline in 1994 took the lives of two women and wounded five others, has passed away. Kivlan’s prosecution of antiabortion zealot John Salvi III involved several BC Law graduates, pitting Kivlan against public defender J.W. Carney Jr. ’78 under presiding Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Barbara A. Dortch-Okara ’74. Kivlan won; Salvi was convicted in 1996. In a Boston Globe story upon Kivlan’s death at the age of 77 last January, Gerald Pudolsky, a former colleague, said of him: “He was the ultimate prosecutor, the ultimate lawyer… He was a tough guy—no one better, no one fairer.”
