Dead attorney’s racist social media posts prompt calls for new trials

[ad_1]

James Gaines was an inmate at MCI-Norfolk, serving a long sentence, when he began to hear alarming rumblings through the prison grapevine about the court-appointed attorney who had represented him in 2005.

Gaines, who is Black and Muslim, heard that his former attorney, Richard Doyle, had a history of posting racist and anti-Muslim posts on Facebook. Those posts are now the basis of Gaines’s bid for a new trial — which he should get.

The posts weren’t subtle. One showed a picture of a pig in a truck with the caption: “Dear muslims, Kiss our big bacon balls.” Others referred to “raghead terrorists,” demanded Muslims, insulted Black people, and trashed trans people. (Many of these posts are unprintable.)

And as this low-life built his extensive Facebook trail, Doyle even made fun of public defenders like him. One post showed a fake billboard depicting a Black lawyer with the caption: “Just because you did it, doesn’t mean you’re guilty.”

All this had been posted by the man assigned to act as Gaines’s advocate during a trial which led to him receiving a 30- to 35-year sentence for armed assault with intent to murder. Gaines maintains his innocence.

“The posts on what was basically a public forum show that he wasn’t really trying to hide his colors, no pun intended,” said Gaines’s current lawyer, William Korman.

“If he’s willing to say all these terrible things about Blacks and Muslims and undocumented people and the trans community, don’t we have to assume that impacts what he did on a daily basis?”

Gaines isn’t alone in taking on Doyle’s corrosive history. Another of Doyle’s former clients, Anthony Dew, has also filed a motion in Superior Court seeking a new trial on sex trafficking and other charges — to which he pleaded guilty, perhaps on the advice of Doyle — based on the demonstrated and now public racism of his lawyer.

Doyle’s old cases are a potential nightmare for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state agency that assigns attorneys to indigent defendants.

An attorney spotted Doyle’s posts on Facebook in 2017 and took them to CPCS. The agency then launched an investigation and barred Doyle from future assignments. But it is only now beginning to screen his former cases involving Black and brown defenders to determine which of them might have grounds for appeal. A spokesman for the agency told me that Doyle, who died last year, probably handled “hundreds” of cases involving indigent Black and brown defendants over the years.

Dew’s attorney, Edward Gaffney, believes that Doyle’s blatant racism can only be addressed by overturning Dew’s conviction. But at an evidentiary hearing earlier this month, Judge Janet Sanders — who is hearing both of these cases — indicated that Gaffney will have to present evidence showing that Doyle’s attitudes affected the way he represented his client.

But how is anyone going to be able to prove that, especially years after these men stood trial?

In Gaffney’s view, it’s obvious that Doyle’s racism had to have tainted his representation. It shouldn’t be necessary to prove that he railroaded his client.

“I try — and this is a very imperfect process — to put myself in the shoes of a Black defendant,” Gaffney told me. “What if this was a Jewish defendant and a Nazi lawyer? I wouldn’t have to hear anything else.”

As far as I’m concerned, many of Doyle’s cases should be treated as tainted and his clients should get new trials. This is the essence of structural racism: being assigned a lawyer by the state, a lawyer who thinks anyone who looks like you is probably guilty and probably belongs in prison.

But legally, these are uncharted waters. There was a high-profile case in Plymouth County some years ago in which a verdict was overturned after prosecutors were found to have used racist language in referring to the defendants.

But none of the lawyers I spoke to could recall a situation in which a defense lawyer was found to have publicly espoused such racist beliefs against people like the clients he represented.

But it’s clear that these men placed their trust in an attorney who did not care about treating them fairly. It’s sobering to think that they are just a couple of the potential victims of Richard Doyle, Esq.

“Every case this guy ever touched is tainted, in my opinion,” Koman said. “And every case this guy ever touched needs to be looked at.”

Doyle’s words—and odious views—can’t be ignored. And these convictions cannot stand.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @Adrian_Walker.

[ad_2]