A public defender is obligated to zealously protect the rights of their client, regardless of race or religion. There is no room for someone like now-deceased attorney Richard Doyle, whose despicable, biased comments against Muslim people, Black people, and others make him unfit to practice law.
The Supreme Judicial Court got it right Thursday when it granted Anthony Dew the opportunity to withdraw his guilty plea and obtain a new trial because Doyle’s bias created a conflict of interest that manifested itself in his representation of Dew and deprived Dew of his right to effective counsel.
The ruling calls attention to Doyle’s misconduct and should inspire others victimized by Doyle’s bias — or bias by other attorneys — to petition to reopen their cases. It will be up to individual judges to expeditiously consider these motions using the standard laid out by the state’s high court.
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“It is an extraordinarily strong decision that protects Mr. Dew but also creates precedent that racism and discrimination will not be tolerated as part of the legal and judicial system,” said Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, who joined other minority rights organizations in an amicus brief supporting Dew. “To have public faith and confidence in the legal system and judicial outcomes, it is critical to root out all manifestations of hate and bigotry, starting with counsel who cannot zealously advocate for their clients based on their identity.”
Dew is a Black, Muslim man who was charged in 2015 with 19 offenses for allegedly running a human trafficking, prostitution, and drug distribution operation. He pleaded guilty to almost all the charges and was sentenced to several concurrent terms of eight to 10 years in prison, followed by seven years of probation.
Doyle was appointed as Dew’s public defender by the Committee for Public Counsel Services. During one of their first meetings, Doyle told Dew to remove his kufi prayer cap; he later refused to meet with Dew because Dew was wearing it. Another time, Doyle told Dew not to wear “that shit” in court, referring to the religious head covering.
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What Dew did not know then was that from at least 2014 to 2017, Doyle made a series of social media posts and comments at the courthouse that were racist and anti-Muslim. The comments are sickening, expletive-laden, and not fit to repeat.
The Committee for Public Counsel Services discovered the posts after getting a complaint in 2017. It suspended Doyle from accepting criminal cases and required him to take an ethics and cultural competency course. He died in March 2021.
Dew found out about the social media posts in 2021 and asked for a new trial, which a Suffolk Superior Court judge denied.
The Supreme Judicial Court, in a unanimous ruling written by Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt, concluded that Doyle’s anti-Muslim and anti-Black animus created a conflict of interest and Doyle “did not leave his deep-seated bigotry at the court house door” but let it influence his representation. Regardless of whether that animus affected the case’s outcome, “Our confidence that the defendant was afforded a constitutionally fair process is necessarily undermined,” the court concluded.
Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden will have to decide whether to re-prosecute Dew; spokesman Jim Borghesani said the office is still reviewing the case. Borghesani called Doyle’s comments “reprehensible” and said, “While we vigorously pursue convictions in every prosecution we bring forward, we recognize the societal imperative of effective and unbiased representation for all defendants.”
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The court ruling only directly affects Dew, but the Committee for Public Counsel Services previously notified 2,500 of Doyle’s clients that Doyle made postings on Facebook that were bigoted against individuals who were Black, Hispanic, Muslim, transgender, and undocumented, and anyone represented by Doyle may be entitled to ask for a new trial or to withdraw a guilty plea. According to CPCS, it received 70 requests to review cases, and attorneys are assessing those cases. At least three motions are pending for new trials. More requests are expected after the SJC ruling, which sets the standard that will be used to review these cases.
“We have zero tolerance when it comes to racist, hateful rhetoric from our attorneys — both from staff and members of the private bar,” CPCS said in a statement. Anthony Benedetti, CPCS’s chief counsel, said the agency has updated its attorney screening processes, though he noted that with 3,000 private attorneys that CPCS assigns to represent indigent clients it is tough to know each one’s personal beliefs.
There will be individuals tainted by Doyle’s bias who will never receive justice. For any number of reasons, they may not be able to or want to return to court to relitigate their case. It may be less clear in other cases than in Dew’s whether Doyle’s bias influenced his representation.
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Yet the decision is an important one for ensuring that the justice system has no place for bigotry. As Barbara Dougan, legal director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Massachusetts, wrote in an e-mail, “We can’t simply ignore or gloss over the level of animus that Doyle displayed — indeed, posted for the world to see — while at the same time aspiring to a legal system that treats equally all who come before it.”
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us on Twitter at @GlobeOpinion.
