BOSTON — Attorneys representing retired State Police Superintendent Colonel Richard McKeon — and a major who filed her own retirement papers a little less than a month ago — raised arguments Thursday in federal court in an attempt to prove that their decision to alter an underling’s arrest report of a judge’s daughter did not violate the constitutional rights of the arresting officer, according to a Boston Globe report documenting the proceedings.
The civil case in question stems from the arrest on October 16, 2017 of Alli Bibaud, daughter of Dudley District Court Judge Timothy Bibaud. State Trooper Ryan Sceviour claims in his lawsuit that McKeon, former State Police Major Susan Anderson, and a host of unnamed “John/Jane Does” conspired with Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early’s office to scrub embarrassing — and incriminating — details from Alli Bibaud’s arrest report.
According to the mutually agreed-upon facts, Sceviour responded to a car accident involving Bibaud and later found the judge’s daughter to be in possession of heroin and under the influence of drugs. Sceviour in his original report wrote that Bibaud at one point admitted without prompting that she had acquired the heroin in exchange for sexual favors and that she offered the trooper sex in exchange for leniency — while also ranting to police about her father’s lofty position in the state judiciary. Sceviour was subsequently ordered to remove the salacious details from the report.
Sceviour has claimed in his lawsuit that the punishment he faced at the hands of his superiors after resisting orders to alter Bibaud’s arrest report — specifically, from McKeon and Anderson — equates to a violation of his constitutional rights.
McKeon’s attorney, Kristen Scammon, argued on Wednesday that her client “ordered a revision to a report that had already been impounded … to avoid pretrial publicity that was adverse to the defendant and to the prosecution,” according to the Globe report.
Sceviour and a drug recognition expert also involved in processing Bibaud’s arrest report, State Trooper Ali Rei — who has filed a federal lawsuit as well — have claimed that they were threatened with punishment and reprimands if they did not agree to sign off on white-washing the embarrassing details from Bibaud’s report.
The Globe’s coverage of Thursday’s hearing indicates that attorneys representing McKeon and Anderson argued that neither Sceviour nor Rei faced any adverse discipline over their roles in processing Bibaud’s arrest report.
“He did not lose rank, he did not lose pay, he did not lose benefits,” Scammon said, referring to Sceviour, while adding that the trooper “was not terminated.”
Sceviour’s attorney, Leonard Kesten, said he’s hoping that a jury will decide the final outcome.
Kesten additionally has claimed that discovery in the case will show that Anderson made it clear she was acting upon orders handed down by state Public Safety Secretary Daniel Bennett, an allegation that Bennett’s office has denied. Meanwhile, Anderson’s attorney, according to the Globe, argued that the impoundment of Bibaud’s arrest report was decided in open court — although Kesten, speaking on behalf of Sceviour, has also alleged that Early’s office was “complicit” in the conspiracy.
