The Vineyard Gazette – Martha's Vineyard News

A dispute between the island's top prosecutor and the Dukes County Sheriff's Office over personnel records reached the state's highest court this week.

On Monday, the Cape and Islands District Attorney's Office filed a lawsuit with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, demanding that the sheriff's office turn over 20 years of employee records that the prosecutor may deem necessary to go into justice in several cases.

The legal complaint is a rare court battle between Vineyard prosecutors and the sheriff's office, and the prosecutor's office claims that if not resolved, it could result in criminal cases being dismissed. The conflict between the two agencies revolves around prosecutor Robert Galibois' attempts to obtain records relating to officer misconduct, internal investigations and other documents that could help a defendant in court.

Commonly referred to as “Brady Information” after the landmark Brady v. Maryland case before the U.S. Supreme Court, prosecutors are required to turn over to defense attorneys any exculpatory evidence, including records of officers involved in the case. . Brady's information can be crucial to a defense attorney, who may question an officer's past conduct in connection with an arrest.

The DA's office created a new policy on information about Brady after Mr. Galibois was elected in 2022. Shortly after taking office, he made requests to law enforcement agencies in the Cape and Islands .

According to the District Attorney's Office, the Dukes County Sheriff's Office, which operates the island's only jail and detention center in Edgartown, and the Barnstable County Sheriff's Office on Cape Cod have not accessed on demand when it was made public in 2023,

Dukes County Sheriff Robert Ogden claimed that Mr. Galibois's understanding of the records requirements was incorrect, according to documents filed in the lawsuit.

Mr. Ogden argued that the district attorney should only request material in a particular case when necessary, not for all officers going back two decades.

The sheriff's office's general counsel, Jack Collins, said Mr. Galibois was the only lawyer in the state, and perhaps the country, to make these types of general requests.

“He is by far the only one who has taken this approach and no one can understand why,” Mr Collins said in an interview with the Gazette this week.

In February 2024, Mr. Ogden expressed his objections to Mr. Galibois' Brady policy in a letter to the prosecutor.

Although well-intentioned, the state Supreme Judicial Court only requires documents to be produced when an officer could be called as a witness or was involved in the investigation, Mr. Ogden wrote.

He saw no court mandate or suggestion that it was the responsibility of prosecutors to preserve records of officers who are not expected to testify.

“In our view, the court's decision does not suggest the blanket pigeonholing of sheriff's employees and police officers for future cases,” Mr. Ogden wrote.

Requesting all officer records would also impose an undue administrative, financial and professional burden on the sheriff's office, Ogden said, before suggesting the policy be suspended.

Mr. Galibois declined to comment on the retrial before the Supreme Judicial Court, citing the ongoing litigation.

The documents requested by the prosecutor's office are public records and could be requested by members of the public and the press. The Sheriff's Office, however, was concerned about the DA's office compiling them all together and the potential creation of a so-called “Brady List” of officers throughout the region.

The release of the records of these officers, who in some cases have only been investigated but not found guilty of wrongdoing, could make it difficult to retain and hire officers at the prison of Edgartown, Mr. Ogden wrote in a previously submitted letter to the editor.

“I have enough difficulty recruiting and retaining staff,” Mr. Ogden wrote in the June 1 letter. “On a small island where almost everyone knows each other, a false accusation can be troubling for a correctional officer as well as his or her family. I owe it to my dedicated staff to protect them and their families from baseless accusations in the press or on social media, disrupting the lives of their families and especially school-age children.

The need to have records of all sheriff's employees over the past 20 years did not make sense to Mr. Collins because the sheriff's office does not play a significant role in arrests and investigations.

Unlike other states, where some sheriff's departments make arrests, investigate crimes and patrol highways, the Vineyard Sheriff's Office operates the island's only jail. The office does little investigative work beyond breathalyzer tests, meaning its officers are less likely to be called to testify in court during arrests.

“None of this should affect the sheriff’s office,” Mr. Collins said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

The district attorney's office says it has about 10 cases in which it asked the sheriff's office for documents related to Brady and was concerned they could be rejected if the records are not produced, according to court records.

Mr Ogden felt this was an exaggeration.

“None of these cases that the DA's staff believed could be dismissed involved an arrest by a member of the Dukes County Sheriff's Office,” Mr. Ogden wrote in his letter to the editor. “All of these cases came from the Island Police Department. Our only commitment has been to house some of them as prisoners while awaiting release on bail or trial.

​​The prosecutor's office also filed a complaint with the Supreme Judicial Court on Monday over non-compliance by the Barnstable County Sheriff's Office.

Like Mr. Ogden on the Vineyard, Barnstable County Sheriff Donna Buckley told the prosecutor that her office would always provide information on a case-by-case basis to employees who were material witnesses in a trial — as is a common practice across the state.

The state Supreme Judicial Court has not set a hearing date for the prosecutor's lawsuit against the Dukes County Sheriff's Office, but Mr. Collins was confident the issue would be resolved in favor of the sheriff.

“I think in the long run, the court is obviously going to sort this out,” he said.