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Closed-door hearing for officer involved in Sandra Birchmore case begins Thursday
The state's police oversight agency will make its case at a closed-door hearing beginning Thursday for why one of the former Stoughton Police officers involved in the Sandra Birchmore case should never again work in law enforcement in Massachusetts.
Robert Devine, the former Stoughton deputy police chief, is among a trio of former Stoughton officers, along with brothers Matthew and William Farwell, accused of having inappropriate sexual relationships with Birchmore after she joined their police youth program as a teenager.
Devine is fighting efforts from the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, or POST, to revoke his certification for police work, a requirement for all officers employed in the commonwealth.
Beginning Thursday, his case will play out in secret at the commission office in Boston after a retired judge presiding over the hearing ruled last week that protective orders covering sensitive evidence necessitated closing proceedings to the public and press.
Some open government advocates criticized the decision for restricting access to a hearing of significant public interest.
The commission was created in 2020, after the killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer, 'to increase transparency and accountability' in law enforcement, said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition.'You've got this horrible case that's going to be heard behind closed doors,' he said. 'That strikes me as out of step with why the commission was created.'
The Birchmore case took a sharp turn last year when federal authorities charged Mathew Farwell with killing Birchmore in February 2021 and staging her death as a suicide. He had hoped to prevent her from revealing their relationship, which authorities said began when she was underage.
A state medical examiner had previously ruled that Birchmore killed herself, a determination federal officials said missed key signs of a cover-up.
According to prosecutors, Birchmore had told Farwell she was pregnant with his child before her death at age 23. Farwell denied to investigators that he was the father.
Neither his brother William nor Devine faces criminal charges connected to the case, though all three are named in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Birchmore's aunt.
Read more: Sandra Birchmore timeline: from Stoughton Explorer to arrest of Matthew Farwell
Devine's hearing centers on claims that he abused his position of authority, lied to internal investigators and behaved in a manner unbecoming of a police officer.
Birchmore met the Farwell brothers and Devine, who supervised them, after joining the Stoughton Police Explorers Program as a 12-year-old in 2010. She remained in the program until graduating high school.
According to federal prosecutors, Matthew Farwell began sexually exploiting Birchmore in 2013, when he was 27 and she was 15, under the age of consent in Massachusetts.
Their sexual encounters continued regularly as she grew older and sometimes occurred while he was on duty, investigators said.
According to charging documents, as Farwell began to lose control of Birchmore in late 2020, he agreed to help her get pregnant in return for keeping their relationship while she was underage a secret.
On Feb. 1, 2021, prosecutors say, Farwell strangled Birchmore at her apartment in Canton and staged her death as a suicide.
The Stoughton Police Department launched an internal investigation after Birchmore's death into her interactions with the Farwell brothers and Devine.
When interviewed by investigators, Devine claimed that he had never communicated online with Birchmore and that the pair had only limited interactions, according to a notice from the POST Commission initiating the decertification proceedings.
But records from Facebook Messenger showed Devine and Birchmore exchanged messages 'on multiple occasions,' he using the alias 'Marty Riggs,' from November 2020 until her death in February 2021, the commission said.
Their messages also indicated that Devine 'arranged to have a sexual encounter' with Birchmore during one shift he was working in December 2021, according to the commission.
The internal investigation by the Stoughton Police found Devine had been untruthful, incompetent and 'failed to demonstrate attention and devotion to his duty.'
In a ruling Friday, Judge Kenneth J. Fishman, who is presiding over the hearing, said protective orders covering evidence related to the case meant the proceedings must be kept confidential.
There are four protective orders dealing with the Birchmore case: one approved by a federal judge dealing with Matthew Farwell's criminal case, one from Attorney General Andrea Campbell's office related to the lawsuit brought by Birchmore's family, and two from Fishman regarding Devine's case with the POST Commission.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts requested the protective order in the Farwell case to prevent the release of information it believed could expose Birchmore or witnesses 'to significant safety and/or privacy risks.'
Among the information covered under the protective order, the government said in a September court filing, were crime scene and autopsy photographs of Birchmore's body, data from her phone and laptop 'from which it would be impractical or impossible to redact all identifying information,' Birchmore's medical records and police reports identifying witnesses by name.
Fishman's order closing Devine's hearing to the public said protective orders were in place to protect confidential evidence and 'the identity of an individual.'
Many of the materials and information would be discussed throughout the hearing, Fishman wrote. Understanding that at least some portion of the hearing must be closed, the judge said he considered 'the feasibility of structuring the presentation of evidence to enable an efficient proceeding between the closed and, if any, open portions of the hearing.'
Attorneys for the commission and Devine advised Fishman that the entire session would be interspersed with discussions of confidential information.
'It's unlikely that any testimony regarding the substance of the allegations would cover topics outside of the protected evidence,' commission lawyers said.
Fishman concluded that there was 'no reasonable method for opening any portions of this hearing to the public without a substantial risk of disclosing confidential evidence,' he wrote.
Commission hearings are 'presumptively public,' but can be closed 'if the presiding officer determines that full or limited closure is necessary to protect privacy interests and will not be contrary to the public interest,' a commission spokesperson said in a statement to MassLive.
The commission pointed to five other cases where hearings had been closed, including cases when it was needed to protect the identity of a victim of sexual or violent crimes, the spokesperson said.
Both Farwell brothers and Devine left the department in 2022. The brothers each reached agreements with the commission last year to be stripped of their certifications, a move that carries a lifetime ban from police work in Massachusetts.
Like other officers whose certifications have been revoked, they were added to a national registry of decertified police officers designed to prevent them from finding police work in other states.
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Read the original article on MassLive.
