Questioning from the Governor’s Council appeared to move a District Court judge to tears Wednesday at a hearing that was haunted by echoes of the time that Judge Andrew D’Angelo ordered a defense lawyer to be locked up for civil contempt, an action the nominee said he almost instantly regretted.
Councilors also prompted D’Angelo, who is seeking approval to join the Appeals Court bench, into moments of introspection with charges that he is seen by some colleagues as smart but “arrogant,” and directed him to alter his demeanor.
A 1993 Suffolk Law alumnus, he worked at Carney & Bassil PC for 13 years before his first visit to the Governor’s Council in late 2006, when the elected panel unanimously confirmed him to a Stoughton District Court judgeship as one of Gov. Mitt Romney’s final lame-duck appointments.
The chief of the District Court, Justice Paul Dawley, was one of two witnesses Wednesday speaking in support of D’Angelo’s ascension to the Appeals Court. Dawley, who said he has known the nominee since his 2006 confirmation, told the News Service that D’Angelo has made a “lot of just really significant contributions to our court.”
“He’s viewed as an expert in drafting model jury instructions, and he has served as a judge who provides guidance to other judges on complex legal issues. He’s an experienced trial lawyer and trial judge, and on a personal basis, dedicated husband and father to six children,” Dawley said.
The hearing ran more than an hour over its allotted time and left a logjam of other nominees and guests out in the hall.
D’Angelo’s extensive judicial resume includes a chairmanship of the District Court Technology Committee, and he testified before the Judiciary Committee last fall on electronic signature legislation to aid the court in making technological innovations. He has also served as acting first judge in Westborough District Court and as an associate justice of the civil Appellate Division, Dawley said.
Councilors did not question him much on those roles. One of the issues that dominated the hearing was an incident that Councilor Terry Kennedy estimated took place around eight or nine years ago.
D’Angelo had ordered a defense attorney, John Gerard, to be held in contempt of court after he refused to comply with an order to proceed to trial in a pending case.
Kennedy reported receiving an unsolicited text message from Gerard on Tuesday night “to tell me that he was fully supporting [D’Angelo’s] nomination” to the Appeals Court.
Yet council members, the majority of whom are practicing attorneys, were rankled by D’Angelo’s use of handcuffs and a jail cell against the lawyer.
Gerard had filed a motion to withdraw from the case after a breakdown in the relationship with his client, D’Angelo said.
“The problem, I guess, as a judge, that was facing me was, the defendant wanted to go to trial and was ready. The alleged victims wanted to go to trial. The prosecutor wanted to go to trial. And this was the thing that was the most difficult — attorney Gerard said he was prepared. He was prepared,” D’Angelo told councilors, adding that their exchange was respectful and not heated.
Gerard would not comply, D’Angelo said, so he directed a court officer to take him into custody. The lawyer was taken to the dock in Worcester District Court — as Councilor Mary Hurley put it, he was taken to the “hoosegow.”
The court entered a recess, D’Angelo went back to his chambers, and he put his head in his hands.
“I can’t do this. I don’t care why. I’m not doing this,” he remembered thinking to himself, ultimately deciding to return to the courtroom and expunge the contempt from the lawyer’s record.
Councilor Robert Jubinville, a defense attorney, rebuked the judge Wednesday for taking the situation to such an extreme.
“You’ve been around the court system. And you knew — you had to know — that that third rail should never be touched. You’ve heard stories about it,” Jubinville said.
It emerged during the hearing that D’Angelo first applied for a move to the Appeals Court in 2015, and Jubinville said that application was stymied by the courtroom incident.
“Do you know why you didn’t get through? It was because you locked that lawyer up,” Jubinville said. “Because your name was floated around the councilors here. And I know what they said to the governor’s lawyer. And I know what I said.”
Councilor Paul DePalo, who represents the Worcester area, said he started receiving phone calls about D’Angelo’s potential nomination to the Appeals Court immediately after he was elected in 2020 — some in support, some not.
DePalo brought up celebrities Will Smith and Chris Rock, and appeared to liken the contempt case to their early-April incident at the Academy Awards in which Smith slapped Rock onstage — an incident that has attached itself to both of their public personas.
“At the same time, I believe in second chances,” DePalo said. “Some people think I believe in them too much. So I don’t think one moment should be held against someone forever and ever.”
To put a lawyer in the dock is “a little too severe,” said Councilor Chris Iannella of Boston, who told a story from early in his legal career — around 42 years ago — when he was told by a Boston Municipal Court judge to either pay a $100 fine or be thrown in the dock.
Not having $100 in his pocket, Iannella recalled walking across the street to City Hall to get the cash from his father, a Boston city councilor, in order to avoid a jail cell. He noted that the judge later apologized.
“I know how wrong it was. I’ve made it clear I know how wrong it was,” D’Angelo said. He added, “It’s a black mark. And I haven’t been able to hide from it.”
Jubinville looked for penance. He drew the hearing to a close by asking D’Angelo to give a formal public apology to Gerard “by name,” which the nominee did.
Councilors also took the judge to task for his alleged personality traits and reputation among colleagues. Councilors Kennedy and Eileen Duff told D’Angelo they had heard from people who called him “arrogant.”
The judge was not sure what left that impression on his colleagues and said maybe it was his sense of humor, or the manner in which he suggests case citations.
Councilor Mary Hurley, a retired District Court judge herself, said she had known D’Angelo was smart and cordial, but “bells started going off in my head like you wouldn’t believe” when she started hearing questionable comments about his demeanor.
She relayed a message from one jurist who served on a committee with D’Angelo, told Hurley she supported his nomination, and said he was “really, really smart, even though he is obnoxious.”
“How do you think you are going to be able to change ‘you’? Other people don’t have to change,” Hurley said. “You have to change, so that if you don’t get 100 percent of people saying ‘Andy D’Angelo’s a great Appeals Court judge,’ if you get 90 or even 80, that’s a huge improvement over where you’re at right now.”
D’Angelo said he realized he needs “to do a better job” and will try to get there through “self-reflection.”
“I have to change in how I come across to people,” he said. D’Angelo added, “I don’t think I’m the smartest person in the room. In fact, most often, I don’t. I just don’t. And I question people, I question cases, in order to get information. To try to find the right result. And if that, in the way I do it, is what’s coming across as obnoxious, opinionated, arrogant, any of the words you use, that is not my intention. But it doesn’t matter what my intention is, because that’s the way it’s coming across.”
Councilor Joe Ferreira shifted gears and thought he was lobbing a softball to D’Angelo -- but after intense rounds of questioning by the other panelists, it appeared to move the nominee to tears.
“None of us ever want to be judged by the one bad thing we did in our lives. And you’ve had a hard day,” the South Coast councilor said, “so tell me about your 16 years of doing good things.”
Around 20 seconds elapsed before D’Angelo began to reply. He took off his glasses, wiped his eyes, then dabbed them with a tissue.
“The part I enjoy is helping people, whether it be the lawyers or the litigants,” he said, taking pauses to collect himself as he choked up. “And what I’m hearing is, which is hard to answer your question, is sometimes it’s not coming across the right way.”