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A retired judge has finished investigating an alleged affair between a New Bedford judge and a Bristol County prosecutor and has filed a confidential report with the state’s highest court. A public hearing in the case will be held on April 9 at the Supreme Judicial Court in Boston.
The filing marks the conclusion of a closed-door investigation that started in May last year.
Anonymous letters began circulating in the South Coast legal community in late 2023, alleging that New Bedford District Court Judge Douglas Darnbrough was having an affair with Bristol County assistant prosecutor Karlyn Butler. The letters also accused them of inappropriately coordinating to influence the outcome of cases.
Shortly after the letters surfaced, Darnbrough stopped appearing in New Bedford court, transferred to a court in Plymouth, and then resigned citing health reasons. Butler was still employed as a county prosecutor as of last month, the latest payroll records show.
In separate legal filings, Darnbrough has denied that the affair happened and Butler has said the anonymous allegations were false. The Bristol County District Attorney’s office has said that the allegations weren’t credible and were part of a harassment campaign.
The allegations, if true, have the potential to impact thousands of convictions — one initial estimate by the state’s public defender organization said prosecution data shows Darnbrough and Butler were both involved in 3,700 criminal cases.
“You have to feel like the system isn’t rigged against you one way or the other, and those letters are very troubling,” said Todd Pomerleau, who represented the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in a “friend of the court” brief supporting further investigation.
Pomerleau drew comparisons to the state drug lab scandal, in which thousands of criminal convictions were overturned because of extensive misconduct in the lab testing drug samples submitted as evidence. He described the alleged New Bedford affair as a “potential scandal that should shock the core of the system.”
People facing criminal charges are entitled to exculpatory evidence under the law, Pomerleau said, and the details in the anonymous letters raise serious questions about the proceedings that Darnbrough and Butler were involved in.
“If this happened, there needs to be accountability,” he said.
In May, Supreme Judicial Court Justice Serge Georges Jr. appointed retired Boston Municipal Court Judge Ernest Sarason Jr. as a special master to investigate the matter on the court’s behalf.
There are many ways the courts could respond if the special master uncovered misconduct, but they mainly involve revisiting convictions that may have been affected, Pomerleau said.
Impacted defendants would probably at least be entitled to new trials, he said. They may need to be held in a different court, if the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office is determined to be too deeply entangled in any misconduct uncovered. Courts could also sanction the district attorney’s office for misconduct by dismissing charges altogether.
The Supreme Judicial Court could decide to vacate convictions en masse, as it did for the state drug lab scandal, or defendants might have to appeal, Pomerleau said. Defendants who already served time in prison or jail might file civil lawsuits for damages over the time they can never get back.
The special master’s investigation stems from appeals filed by men convicted in two cases involving Darnbrough and Butler in 2023.
Gerson Pascual-Santana was sentenced to 3½ years in prison after being convicted of molesting a child under 14, and Jonathan Rascao was sentenced to 3 years on charges of sexually assaulting a mentally disabled person. Both men are now on probation after completing their prison sentences, according to their lawyer, James McKenna. Both were prosecuted by Butler with Darnbrough presiding as the judge.
McKenna has argued that the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office didn’t do enough to investigate the allegations about Darnbrough and Butler and that his clients’ rights to potentially exculpatory evidence were violated because the prosecutor and court did not release records showing how they investigated the alleged affair. He asked the Supreme Judicial Court for new trials because of those alleged failures.
In filings, the district attorney’s office has said the anonymous letters were part of a “years-long campaign of harassment” against multiple employees of the DA and the Trial Court. Earlier in the appeal process, the office said it had investigated the allegations, though it later said it relied on a Trial Court investigation, which the office said found “no evidence” of an inappropriate relationship. That investigation has not been made public.
In May, Justice Georges appointed Sarason as special master in Pascual-Santana’s appeal and authorized him to access the Trial Court’s internal investigation. The special master also had broad authority to subpoena witnesses and documents to “investigate the nature and extent of the relationship” between Darnbrough and Butler.
Initially, the appeal was only between Pascual-Santana and prosecutors. But Darnbrough and Butler were allowed to join the case as “interveners” to defend their privacy and reputational interests. The Trial Court was allowed to join the case to protect “confidential judicial information.”
The appeal’s public docket shows that Sarason did issue subpoenas. Six unnamed witnesses were involved. Several hearings were held behind closed doors. Copies of the anonymous letters appear to have been filed, as well as “Karlyn Butler’s Forensic Report and Phone Number.”
The entire investigation was to be kept confidential, and everyone involved was required to sign a protective order that prevented them from releasing any investigation materials. The special master’s report is impounded, “unless otherwise ordered by the court.”
The report is now in the hands of Justice Georges, a court spokesperson confirmed. The justice will preside over an in-person status conference scheduled for April 9, the first public event in the appeal in nearly a year.
McKenna, the lawyer bringing the appeal, is still not allowed to discuss the materials uncovered, but in a phone interview he said he was satisfied with the depth of the investigation.
Butler’s lawyers declined to comment for this story. Darnbrough’s lawyers did not respond to emails requesting comment.
A lawyer representing the Trial Court did not respond to emails requesting comment.
Jennifer Sowa, a spokesperson for the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office who is representing the office in the appeal case, did not respond to emails requesting comment.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org.
