Sept. 6, 2022, 7:59 p.m. ETSept. 6, 2022, 7:59 p.m. ET
Jazmine Ulloa
The Suffolk County district attorney, Kevin Hayden, left, and Ricardo Arroyo, Boston City Council member, at a debate in August.
In a mostly quiet Massachusetts primary season with little top-of-the-ticket suspense, much of the attention has focused instead on a down-ballot race embroiled in scandal: the contest for Suffolk County district attorney.
Kevin Hayden, a Democrat appointed to the post by Gov. Charlie Baker in January, is facing a primary challenge from Ricardo Arroyo, a Boston city councilor — and both candidates are under heavy scrutiny.
Mr. Hayden has been accused of seeking to quash a police misconduct case soon after taking over as district attorney. Mr. Arroyo is contending with reports that he was twice investigated by police over allegations of sexual assault, allegations he denies.
With no Republican running, whoever prevails will take over the office, which oversees criminal cases in Boston, Winthrop, Chelsea and Revere.
The race for the county’s top law enforcement job — vacated by Rachael Rollins in January, when she became the United States Attorney for Massachusetts — began with a focus on experience and each candidate’s approach to criminal justice.
Mr. Arroyo, a public defender for three years, pledged to continue Ms. Rollins’s progressive policies. Mr. Hayden pointed to his more than 25 years as a prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer.
But Mr. Hayden faced questions after The Boston Globe examined his office’s handling of a case involving accusations of wrongdoing by transit police officers. In the April 2021 case, a white transit officer who was off duty was accused of pointing his gun at a Black man in a traffic dispute and then filing false reports on the matter. Ms. Rollins began an investigation, but after Mr. Hayden took over, the district attorney’s office was accused of moving to shut it down, The Globe reported.
Mr. Hayden’s campaign has denied that anyone was told to halt or slow the investigation. Cameron Charbonnier, a consultant to Mr. Hayden’s campaign, said the case was expected to go before a grand jury.
Mr. Arroyo, for his part, lost several key endorsements after The Globe reported that he had twice been accused of sexual assault, once by a high school classmate who said he had coerced her into providing oral sex in 2005, when she was 17 and he was 18, and two years later by another girl, who was 16 when she told police that he may have raped her after she got drunk at a party.
Mr. Arroyo’s campaign produced records showing that a Boston police detective in 2006 had found the 2005 allegation “unfounded.” The 2007 accuser later recanted.
What the police meant by “unfounded” has sparked its own debate. Leonard H. Kesten, a lawyer for the accuser in the 2005 case, said the district attorney’s office at the time concluded that it could not be prosecuted as sexual assault in the absence of physical violence — not that it had not occurred.
“The focus on the word ‘unfounded’ is unfair,” Mr. Kesten said, adding that it was the word that authorities checked off to close the case. “In 2022, ‘no’ means no. This was different in 2005.”
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, Representative Ayanna Pressley and Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston all have withdrawn their endorsements of Mr. Arroyo. At a tumultuous City Council meeting, yelling and scuffles broke out amid debate over the accusations.
The clouds over both candidates prompted Ms. Pressley, for one, to say she would stay out of the contest entirely. “The events of the past two weeks have caused renewed trauma for all involved and deeply eroded public trust in our candidates for Suffolk County District Attorney,” she wrote on Twitter. “As a result, I am no longer endorsing in this race.”
Source: nytimes.com
