Court Opinion

ID: 9519656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:21:29.502859+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:35.209778
License: Public Domain

Braucher, J.
(concurring). In order to achieve consensus among views which inevitably differ in detail, the court has omitted from its opinion facts that seem important to me. Since others feel compelled, in good conscience, to record their differences, I state mine. I join in the court’s opinion, as far as it goes.
Mr. Orfanello appeared before us as an honorable, loyal and reliable public servant, but as a witness whose memory was not always accurate. He had been appointed administrative assistant by the Chief Justice’s predecessor in office, who had vigorously opposed and publicly denounced the appointment of Chief Justice Bonin. The Chief Justice did not have a high regard for the administrative assistant he had inherited, and Mr. Orfanello was aware of that fact and was concerned about his tenure. The two did not communicate easily and freely.
On the morning of Thursday, April 6, 1978, both men saw the front page news story with the headline “Bonin at benefit for sex defendants.” The Chief Justice was under investigation on a variety of charges, most of which have since been dropped, and he had for several months been the subject of violent public criticism. He doubtless felt unfairly pursued and persecuted. On Wednesday he had treated friendly attempts to warn him as invasions of his privacy, reacting with the kind of stubborn resistance that produces self-inflicted wounds.
In this situation the Chief Justice made an attempt, with the aid of counsel, to reconstruct the events of Wednesday and to issue a press release that would square with what he could remember and with what he could ascertain. His reconstructed memory, based in part on Mr. Orfanello’s written statement made on Friday morning, was more *730positive than it should have been, and some of his failures of memory seem too convenient. But I cannot make a finding of deliberate falsehood on the basis of his own testimony.
Meanwhile, Mr. Orfanello had told at least three people on Thursday morning that he had warned the Chief Justice on Wednesday that the Gore Vidal meeting was a fund raiser for Superior Court criminal defendants. Later on Thursday and on Friday morning he gave two quite different accounts to counsel for the Chief Justice. I have no doubt that his Thursday morning statements were honest, but there is little to corroborate them. He now says his Thursday afternoon and Friday statements were false. By Sunday, contrary to his testimony, he must have realized that he could be blamed if he had failed to warn the Chief Justice adequately, and he consulted counsel. As counsel, he chose the former Chief Justice. Thereafter, he resolved his dilemma, and told counsel for Chief Justice Bonin that if he testified under oath he would “bury” the Chief Justice.
We must be careful to distinguish large sins from small ones. Particularly dangerous is the escalation of misunderstanding, difference of recollection, and public clamor into charges of deliberate falsehood, false swearing and the like. On the record before us, I cannot sustain such charges on the basis of Mr. Orfanello’s testimony. Without that testimony, such charges are baseless.
Apart from the charges that are not proved, there is sufficient proof of actual impropriety, as distinguished from “appearance of impropriety,” to warrant the court’s decision. The injunction of Canon 2 of the Code of Judicial Conduct against appearance of impropriety must not be read to require that a judge cater to popular misunderstanding or prejudice in his extrajudicial conduct. His duty “to the public should never be subordinate merely because the full discharge of his obligation may be misunderstood or may tend to subject him or the legal profession to criticism.” American Bar Association, Ethical Consideration 9-2, accompanying Canon 9 of the Code of Professional Respondsibility, S.J.C. Rule 3:22, 359 Mass. 829 (1972). I should be *731reluctant to join in censure based solely on appearance of impropriety, and do not read Matter of Morrissey, 366 Mass. 11, 16 (1974), as so based.