Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said Monday that she was pleased the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in her favor in a dispute with Boston Municipal Judge Richard Sinnott, calling his behavior in the matter "unhinged" and symbolic of larger problems within the system.
Last week, Sinnott refused to let the district attorney’s office drop charges against one of the counter-protesters arrested by Boston police during the Aug. 31 "Straight Pride" parade in Boston. Rollins had instructed her attorneys not to pursue cases against those charged with nonviolent crimes and who did not have a criminal background, or in cases in which her office did not see probable cause. Rollins did pursue charges against eight other counter-protesters who had been accused of violence.
"I was ready for a fight," Rollins said. "Change is not easy. Everyone loves to think about change and wants it, but doesn't want to put in the work. We are going through the hard work of changing a system that is operating exactly the way it was set up to work."
“There are people that have problems with what it is that I’m proposing, but this was not the appropriate forum or act in order to challenge that,” she said of Sinnott’s actions, calling him “an individual who, I think, came unhinged” during the week-long judicial showdown.
Sinnott's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In response to Sinnott's ruling last week, Rollins filed an emergency petition with the SJC, asking it to intervene. On Monday, the state’s highest court released their ruling that Sinnott had “no authority” to steamroll Rollins’ handling of the case.
When asked about the possibility that Sinnott overruled her not based on the merits of the case, but because he disagreed with her political views, Rollins responded that it is a concern of hers, but that his actions were symptomatic of what she said were much larger systemic problems and that "judges abusing their discretion" is commonplace.
"We've been seeing this for decades, but now miraculously because Attorney Church spent three hours in jail, the media's up in arms about this," Rollins said, referring to Susan Church. She is a defense attorney for a counter-protester who was held in contempt and taken into custody for more than two hours last week after she continued to read case law in court despite Sinnott ordering her stop.
Overall, though, Rollins indicated that she is optimistic about the progress she has seen after her office's dispute with Sinnott.
“I’m really happy with the fact that people are reacting this way, because it’s very obvious I’m on to something, and the people of Suffolk County are as well,” she said. “And we are having conversations for the first time about really important things that have to do with wealth based disparities, and some race based disparities. I’m excited about the fact that people actually care about the system now.”
