Judge in Herald case asks early retirement

Judge Ernest B. Murphy, the superior court jurist who won a $2.01 million libel verdict against the Boston Herald, is seeking to retire early with a lucrative disability pension based on his assertion that he is suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of the drawn-out legal battle and the newspaper stories that sparked it.

But Governor Deval Patrick yesterday immediately rejected the appeal from Murphy, who is facing judicial ethics charges because of letters he wrote to Herald publisher Patrick J. Purcell after the verdict, demanding more money.

"The administration does not support this request on the merits and will not be forwarding it to the Governor's Council for approval," Kyle Sullivan, Patrick's press secretary, said in a written statement to the Globe.

Michael E. Mone, the Boston lawyer who represented Murphy in the libel case, said the judge's doctors have concluded that he is physically and mentally unfit to continue serving on the bench as a result of the bitter battle.

"He is disabled," Mone said yesterday, confirming that he has filed a petition with Patrick with documents from Murphy's internist and his psychiatrist attesting to the judge's condition. "He has significant physical and mental problems and significant posttraumatic disorder," Mone said.

He declined to offer further details on Murphy's condition, identify the doctors, or give a copy of the petition to the Globe. He said Murphy, who is on sick leave, was not available for comment.

Murphy, 64, is seeking a judicial disability pension that would provide him 75 percent of his $129,800 a year salary, free of state income tax. Murphy's seven years of service on the bench is three years shy of the 10 needed to qualify for a pension. At 10 years, he would become eligible for a 50 percent, state-taxable pension.

Murphy's efforts to leave the bench on a disability, just weeks before he faces a judicial conduct hearing, marks another unusual twist in an often ugly saga that began when the Herald wrote a series of articles five years ago that portrayed Murphy as being soft on crime.

The stories contained several explosive quotes attributed to Murphy by unnamed sources, including a report that he said a 14-year-old rape victim needed "to get over it." Murphy filed a defamation suit that produced a tough and costly verdict, one of the largest in Massachusetts history, against the Herald.

During the trial, Murphy's lawyers said that the hate mail that flooded into his office as a result of the articles caused him considerable emotional and physical distress.

The legal battle concluded with a unanimous Supreme Judicial Court ruling in May upholding the $2.01 million verdict and condemning the newspaper. It said the Herald had maliciously published false and defamatory material about the judge. The Herald subsequently wrote Murphy a check for $3.41 million, which included $1.4 million in interest accrued since the verdict in February 2005.

Murphy's success in the suit may work against him in his efforts to win a disability pension on Beacon Hill.

"A lot of people need a pension to survive," said one councilor, who requested anonymity. "He's not one of them." The councilor said that it appeared unlikely that a majority of the council would have supported Murphy's petition.

Last month, the Judicial Conduct Commission filed charges against Murphy with the SJC, asserting he violated judicial ethics standards when, after the initial verdict, he sent Purcell a handwritten note requesting a private meeting to discuss getting more money from the newspaper. The commission said Murphy was trying to use his judicial position for personal gain in a way that casts doubt on his impartiality.

"You will bring to that meeting a cashiers check, payable to me, in the sum of $3,260,000," read the letter, written on Superior Court stationery. "No check, no meeting." Murphy wrote that it was in Purcell's "distinct business interests" to give him the money.

A one-page postscript warned Purcell that telling anyone about the letter would be "a BIG mistake." The Herald printed it on its front page.

Disability pensions for judges are not uncommon. In 2002, Acting Governor Jane Swift and the Governor's Council approved a disability pension for June Carolyn Miles, a juvenile court judge, who received early retirement after cases triggered repressed memories of abuse she underwent as a child. She died of colon cancer in 2005.

In 2000, embattled Boston Municipal Court Judge J. Peter Donovan, facing possible ethics charges, was granted a mental health disability that boosted his pension by nearly 80 percent.

The Judicial Conduct Commission was investigating a 1993 traffic accident in which he inappropriately informed responding Framingham police officers that he was a judge and used offensive language to describe a woman driving a car he had hit. He was charged with drunken driving, but the case was dismissed three years later.

Mone said that if Murphy is granted a disability pension and retired from the bench, he would still defend himself against the commission's charges. The commission is expected to hold a hearing on the charges within the next two months.

Lorna McKenzie-Pollock, a psychiatric social worker who specializes in assessing and treating trauma, said claims of developing post traumatic stress disorder in the workplace are not unusual.

She said her work deals not only with earthquake survivors, combat veterans, and torture victims, but also people in the workplace who suffer from sexual harassment and witness industrial accidents.

"I can see it is possible that someone could get PTSD from something like hate mail," she said. "Some claim it, and some of those are malingerers and some really have it."

"But just because you have distress, does not you mean you are disabled, although it may," said McKenzie-Pollock, who teaches at Boston University's School of Social Work.