A STATE JUDGE sided with Shannon O’Brien on Tuesday, ruling that the suspended chair of the Cannabis Control Commission shouldn’t be required to meet with Treasurer Deborah Goldberg until all of the investigations into O’Brien are completed and the investigators are available for questioning.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Debra Squires-Lee indefinitely postponed the hearing with Goldberg, which had been scheduled to take place Tuesday afternoon. The judge scheduled a hearing for December 14 where she indicated the format of the Goldberg-O’Brien meeting would be reviewed.
“The ruling by the court today is the first step in getting my good reputation back after 10 weeks of being smeared by the actions of Treasurer Goldberg in suspending me with no process in place for a fair and impartial hearing,” said O’Brien in a statement. “This is a major victory for basic fairness and confirmation that Treasurer Goldberg tried to deny me due process in responding to these baseless, meritless allegations.”
The judge did not side with O’Brien on everything, however. O’Brien’s attorneys have argued that Goldberg should not serve as the fact-finder in the case, describing the treasurer as judge, jury, and executioner. But Squires-Lee said Goldberg, the person who appointed O’Brien chair in the first place, will make the decision on whether O’Brien meets the criteria for removal from her position.
The judge also agreed with Goldberg that the hearing wouldn’t operate like a trial, so O’Brien wouldn’t have a right of discovery or the ability to compel witnesses to testify.
On Monday, O’Brien’s attorney called the charges against his client “laughable,” but a spokesman for the treasurer took umbrage at that characterization. “We could not disagree more with the statement of the chair’s lawyer that there is anything laughable about these types of allegations,” said Andrew Napolitano.
In her ruling, the judge specifically pointed to two arguments made by O’Brien’s legal team that convinced her the meeting with Goldberg scheduled for Tuesday needed to be postponed.
O’Brien only has the results of one of the two investigations conducted about her behavior at the Cannabis Control Commission. The first investigation, focused on allegedly racially insensitive conduct by O’Brien, has been made available to O’Brien’s legal team. However, the findings of a second investigation focused on O’Brien’s allegedly harmful conduct toward the commission’s executive director has not been completed yet.
According to the judge, without the second report, O’Brien doesn’t have all of the facts necessary to meaningfully present her case. She rejected Goldberg’s argument that Tuesday’s hearing would have focused on the initial report and a second hearing would be needed on the second report.
“Absent the report, O’Brien does not have the requisite explanation of the evidence against her as gathered by the investigator,” the judge wrote in her decision. “[A] meaningful opportunity to be heard requires understanding the full extent of the allegations you face and their factual underpinning. Being forced to defend oneself with partial information does not comport with basic due process.”
The judge also zeroed in on the fact that the investigator who created the first report would not be able to attend the December 5 hearing.
“O’Brien should be permitted to cross-examine the investigators and demonstrate any errors, omissions, or inconsistencies in the investigator’s inquiries and/or conclusions before presenting her position,” the judge wrote.