Justice Behind Closed Doors in Massachusetts
Massachusetts is the only state in the nation that exempts all three branches of state government; legislature, governor’s office, and judiciary from its public records law. That became an issue in 2023 when anonymous letters began to be received by defense attorneys whose clients had been convicted in criminal cases heard in the Bristol County Courthouse in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The letters alleged that Karlyn Butler, a Bristol County prosecutor, had engaged in a romantic relationship with then-judge Douglas Darnbrough in whose courtroom she often tried cases. The letters also allege that the two colluded regarding how cases would play out before they were tried. Butler and Darnbrough are estimated to have worked on as many as 3,700 cases together. The allegations, if true, would have necessitated vacating the guilty verdicts or retrying the cases.
With no applicable public records law, the public has no way of knowing what the texts Darnbrough wrote to Butler said.
Douglas Darnbrough resigned as a judge shortly after the anonymous letters began to arrive, giving health issues as the reason. Karlyn Butler is still employed as a prosecutor in Bristol county in southeastern Massachusetts. Darnbrough and Butler have both denied the allegations.
These allegations could not have come at a worse time for state officials. The Massachusetts criminal justice system has been awash in scandal in recent years. More than 40,000 drug convictions have had to be dismissed due to misconduct by two chemists, Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak, who worked at state crime laboratories. In 2025 Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor was fired from his job and banned from working as a police officer anywhere in Massachusetts due to his behavior while serving as lead investigator in the Karen Read case.
Attorney James P. McKenna filed a lawsuit on behalf of two of his clients, Gerson Pascual-Santana and Jonathan Rascao, who were each sentenced to prison terms by then-judge Darnbrough after trials prosecuted by Butler.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court assigned one of its justices, Serge Georges, Jr., to investigate the allegations of an improper relationship. In May 2025 Justice Georges appointed Ernest Sarason, Jr., a retired Massachusetts Municipal Court judge, to be a Special Master with the power to issue subpoenas and hear testimony from witnesses under oath.
All of the sworn testimony heard by the Special Master took place behind closed doors over the past year. After Sarason’s investigation was completed and his report submitted, Justice Georges convened a status hearing on May 9, 2026 which was open to the public; releasing the Special Master’s report to the public the same day. In his report, Special Master Sarason found no evidence of an inappropriate relationship between Butler and Darnbrough. At the hearing, Justice Georges stated that he wanted the public to have confidence in the integrity of the investigation. But since the hearings presided over by the Special Master were cloaked in secrecy it is difficult for the public to know whether they constituted a thorough investigation, a whitewash, or something in-between.
Excerpts said to be from the anonymous letters appeared in a December 17, 2024 article in the Daily Mail by Germania Rodriguez Poleo. The excerpts give specific dates, times, and locations for the alleged trysts between Darnbrough and Butler including such granular detail as the type of vehicle each party drove to the alleged encounters. One of the letters, a copy of which is on file at New Bedford District Court, says “They go to the candleworks restaurant after their trials and drink together and go upstairs to a room and have sex. The office room belongs to a close friend of hers.”
The restaurant currently has a new name. It is located four-tenths of a mile from the courthouse in a privately owned commercial building that has never been used to transact court business. (One of the letters excerpted in the Daily Mail article states the alleged office is “nearby” to the restaurant as opposed to being in the same building.)
Sarason noted in his report that he decided he was only going to give credence to the anonymous letters if and when he received information from other sources that corroborated them. That decision by Sarason and the fact that the testimony of witnesses took place behind closed doors means there is no way for the public to know if Darnbrough and Butler were ever asked under oath whether the specific alleged off-campus, after hours meetings ever took place.
The transcripts of those hearings before the Special Master would shed light on such issues. It is possible that Justice Georges might decide to release the transcripts of the Sarason hearings, but because Massachusetts has no comprehensive public records law, he is under no obligation to do so.
At the May 9th status hearing, Attorney McKenna raised doubts about data extracted from the respective cell phones of Darnbrough and Butler. Darnbrough’s testimony before Judge Sarason on this matter was inconsistent. First Darnbrough said he never texted Butler; later that he may have, but only for administrative purposes. Initially, Darnbrough testified that he did not regularly delete texts, but then claimed to do so every other day. Darnbrough’s phone showed two texts sent to Butler prior to October 25, 2023. Butler’s phone showed nothing to or from Darnbrough in 2021, 2022, or 2023. In his report, Judge Sarason concluded “It is concerning that the evaluations of Judge Darnbrough’s and ADA Butler’s phones are inconsistent, and nothing in the testimony or the posthearing briefing explains the inconsistency.”
At the April 9th status hearing, an attorney for Butler countered that it was not unusual for such discrepancies to occur when the messages are a year old. She did not explain what she meant by this or what qualifications, if any, she possesses as a data retrieval expert. With no applicable public records law, the public has no way of knowing what the texts Darnbrough wrote to Butler said; the contents of the respective reports submitted by the two data extraction experts; or the qualifications of those experts.
A better public records law would allow Massachusetts residents to have more confidence in the integrity of their legal system.
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David Rigby is an historian, writer, and editor in Acton, MA. Three of his books on military history are currently in print. The fourth, on economic mobilization on the American World War II home front, will be published by the Naval Institute Press in February 2027.
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