Legal community abuzz over disbarment decision

The last time Christopher and Kerri Panos saw their good friend M. Ellen Carpenter socially was nearly two years ago, when she attended the christening of their newborn twins. Carpenter, the twins' godmother, has been consumed since then with ''the project."

Everyone knew what she meant: her long-awaited decision about what punishment, if any, to mete out against three prominent lawyers involved in the epic legal battle over the Demoulas supermarket fortune.

The case was extremely sensitive, and Carpenter's friends and colleagues said they had no idea what her recommendation would be. They finally found out Thursday, when Carpenter issued a 229-page report recommending that all three be disbarred.

Carpenter, an unpaid hearing officer for the state Board of Bar Overseers, concluded that an alleged plot by Kevin P. Curry, Gary C. Crossen, and Richard K. Donahue to try to show that Superior Court Judge Maria Lopez was biased in the case had ''brought shame and disrepute" to the legal community and warranted the harshest punishment possible. The controversial decision, which took Carpenter many nights and weekends to prepare, has made her the talk of legal circles.

Carpenter, the 50-year-old president of the Boston Bar Association, won't talk about the case. But people who know her say the decision reflects her core values, including a belief that lawyers should demonstrate both integrity and zealous advocacy when working for clients.

Renee Landers, a friend of Carpenter's and her predecessor as bar association president, said Carpenter believes ''being fair and straightforward with people is really important, even if it's difficult, even if it means you don't win."

In the decision, Carpenter skewered the lawyers for allegedly trying to wring evidence from Lopez's former law clerk through trickery, extortion, and intimidation. They left the impression, she wrote, that lawyers, ''even very prominent ones, will do almost anything to prevail if enough money is at stake and available for their use." The three compounded the misconduct, she wrote, through dishonest testimony in 25 days of hearings spread out over 18 months in 2002 and 2003.

Before the decision can take effect, it must be approved by the 12-member Board of Bar Overseers and then a single Supreme Judicial Court justice. The three lawyers plan to appeal.

Weighing the ethical conduct of a fellow lawyer is often difficult, but it can be especially challenging in the relatively small Boston bar, where hearing officers may well be familiar with the lawyers they're disciplining.

Carpenter, for example, was a colleague of Crossen's for about six months, when their tenures overlapped at the US attorney's office in the late 1980s; none of the people involved in the case asked her to recuse herself, and she told them before the hearings that the tie would have no impact.

But Carpenter's task may have been even more daunting given how much attention the Demoulas court battle had garnered and that Crossen and Donahue are well-connected lawyers fighting for their professional lives.

''I think the whole project weighed on her, because she knew that it would be subjected to a lot of scrutiny," said Landers, an associate professor at Suffolk University Law School. But she said Carpenter, a native of Bennington, Vt., ''is the kind of person who calls things as she sees them."

Ned Leibensperger, president-elect of the Boston Bar Association, said it had to have added to the pressure for Carpenter that people kept asking her when she would issue her report. ''She was very steadfast that, 'I'm going to do this job right and not be rushed,' " he said.

Carpenter, who is single and a graduate of the University of Vermont and Notre Dame Law School, spent hundreds of hours combing through transcripts and reviewing the testimony of 21 witnesses. Friends and colleagues say she even lugged boxes of documents with her to American Bar Association conferences in Salt Lake City and Atlanta.

She had to balance the task with her job as a bankruptcy lawyer at Roach & Carpenter, a small law firm that she and four other women started after they left the US attorney's office, and other responsibilities.

Donahue, Crossen, and Curry condemned her findings. Thomas Kiley, who represented Crossen, called it the work of ''a hearing officer with righteous hindsight." He said Carpenter brushed aside the fact his client felt he had to investigate evidence of Lopez's partiality.

But John Mirick, a Worcester lawyer who assigned Carpenter to serve as hearing officer on the Demoulas case when he was chairman of the Board of Bar Overseers, said he's sure she gave the three lawyers a fair shake.

''I feel very confident that Ellen gave them that."