State Police Brass Named In ‘Troopergate’ Lawsuit Angling To Have Case Removed From Federal Court

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2018/04/19/state-police-brass-named-in-troopergate-lawsuit-angling-to-have-case-removed-from-federal-court/

BOSTON — Attorneys representing a host of former top State Police brass accused in a federal lawsuit by an underling of conspiring to erase embarrassing details from the arrest report involving a prominent Worcester County judge’s daughter are working to have the case removed from federal court, sources tell New Boston Post.

Asked on Thursday to comment on the development, the attorney representing State Trooper Ryan Sceviour said discovery proceedings in the Sceviour case, in addition to a separate federal lawsuit filed by a drug recognition expert who worked with Sceviour to process the October arrest of 31-year-old Alli Bibaud, have been placed on hold pending an upcoming decision from U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. in Boston.

“We are anxious to hear from him,” Sceviour’s attorney, Leonard H. Kesten, said of O’Toole, referring to the decision before the judge. 

On March 15, attorneys representing retired State Police Superintendent Colonel Richard D. McKeon and retired State Police Major Susan Anderson appeared in court to demand that O’Toole toss the case, arguing that the decision to direct Sceviour to alter Bibaud’s arrest report did not violate Sceviour’s constitutional rights. A transcript of the March 15 proceedings, approved for release last week and obtained by New Boston Post on Wednesday, shows that attorneys representing McKeon and Anderson have argued that Sceviour has “failed to state a claim” of property loss — he “did not lose rank, did not lose pay, did not lose benefits,” said McKeon’s attorney, Kristen S. Scammon.

“What Colonel McKeon did here was order a revision to a report that had already been impounded by a court on motion of a defense lawyer to avoid pretrial publicity adverse to the defendant and potentially adverse to the prosecution,” Scammon told O’Toole.

Anderson’s attorney, Timothy M. Burke, then defended Worcester County District Attorney Joe Early’s decision to move Bibaud’s case out of the county. Burke claimed the case quickly “turned into a media circus.”

Kesten, however, described the motion to impound as “sketchy.” 

Regarding his client Sceviour, Kesten told O’Toole:

At one point, in arguing for his client McKeon’s qualified immunity — the privilege given to government officials performing what he described as “discretionary functions” where the “conduct doesn’t violate a clearly established statutory or constitutional right of which a reasonable person would have known” — Burke told O’Toole that “you’d have to be a boob as a police offer and to be completely oblivious to the constitutional rights that everybody knows about to not be given qualified immunity.”

Kesten then questioned why McKeon, and Anderson, elected to file for retirement following the filing of his client’s lawsuit:

 

Read the transcript:

3 15 18 Sceviour v. McKeon by Evan on Scribd