IN ONE OF HIS LAST nominations as governor, Gov. Charlie Baker has nominated Governor’s Councilor Robert Jubinville to a lifetime appointment as clerk magistrate of Framingham District Court.  

Jubinville’s nomination must still be approved by his colleagues on the Governor’s Council. 

It is not the first time Baker has chosen a sitting governor’s councilor for a judicial appointment. In 2019, Baker nominated Jennie Caissie, the only Republican member of the Governor’s Council, to be clerk magistrate in Dudley District Court.  

Her colleagues confirmed her, but Jubinville was one of two councilors to vote against the confirmation. Jubinville criticized the Baker-Polito administration at that time for choosing nominees who have personal ties to Polito, including Caissie and a police detective who coached Polito’s son. Jubinville told the Boston Herald in 2019 that the nomination process “stinks to high heaven.” 

Baker, in a statement, called Jubinville “a well-qualified candidate for the judiciary.” 

Polito, who chairs the Governor’s Council, said Jubinville “possesses decades of experience in law that make him a well-suited candidate for the Framingham District Court.” 

Jubinville is a Democrat. But he has at times been an ally of the administration, most recently this week when he was one of the few governor’s councilors who told the State House News Service that he would have supported the controversial pardons of Gerald Amirault and Cheryl Amirault Lefave, who were convicted of child sex abuse in the Fells Acres Day Care case.  

At a pardon hearing this week, Jubinville was one of the only councilors not to criticize Baker for the way he proposed the pardons, counter to the advice of the Advisory Board of Pardons. Jubinville sounded more open than most of the other councilors to the pardon, saying publicly that a parole hearing to him is about “how much punishment does someone have to endure before we say he’s paid his debt to society.” Baker withdrew the pardon recommendation because he felt he did not have sufficient support from the council. 

Jubinville, a Milton resident, began his law career as a defense lawyer in 1979 working for two private law firms before opening his own law office in 1996. He is a US Army veteran and a former State Police detective. He was first elected to the Governor’s Council in 2012 and was just elected to a sixth term. 

Jubinville earned a bachelor’s degree from Suffolk University in 1973 and a law degree from Suffolk University Law School in 1977. 

Jubinville could not immediately be reached after his nomination was announced.