Reprimand urged for judge who sent letter to publisher
By DENISE LAVOIE
The Associated Press
Nov 22, 2007
A Massachusetts Superior Court judge who wrote threatening letters to the publisher of the Boston Herald after winning a $2 million libel suit against the newspaper should be publicly reprimanded, a hearing officer recommended in a report released yesterday.
Judge Ernest Murphy was charged with ethics violations for sending two letters - one on court letterhead - to Herald publisher Patrick Purcell.
During a hearing last month, Murphy said he wrote the letters after he and his family had gone through years of emotional turmoil caused by a series of articles in which he was depicted as soft on crime and insensitive to the suffering of a 14-year-old rape victim. Murphy was quoted as saying of the victim: "Tell her to get over it."
Murphy denied making the statement, and a jury in 2005 found that the newspaper had libeled the judge.
Two days after the verdict, Murphy wrote the first of two letters to Purcell in which he told Purcell to bring a check for $3.26 million to a private meeting. Murphy said he wrote the letters in an attempt to persuade the Herald not to appeal the jury's verdict.
In his first handwritten note, Murphy demanded a private meeting with
Purcell.
"You will bring to that meeting a cashier's check, payable to me, in
the sum of $3,260,000," he wrote. No check, no meeting."
A separate single-page postscript warns Purcell that showing anyone the letter would be "a BIG mistake." In the second letter, Murphy told Purcell he had "ZERO chance" of reversing the jury's verdict on appeal.
Hearing Officer Peter Kilborn found that the letters were threatening in tone and violated the code of conduct for judges. He also found that by sending the letters, Murphy violated a rule that forbids a judge from using the prestige of his office to advance his own interests.
' "Do what I say or you'll be sorry' is the message," Kilborn said of Murphy's letters. "The recipient of such communications can reasonably apprehend that a judge can find ways to make good on threats."
The Herald appealed the libel verdict, but the state Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the jury's verdict. Murphy, who is currently on paid leave from the bench, received a check for $3.4 million in June, which included the jury award plus interest.
During the hearing before Kilborn, Murphy testified that he asked Purcell to bring $3.26 million to the meeting as part of a "strategy" to persuade him to end the case and avoid additional interest charges or attorneys' fees.