By Mike Beaudet
Producer Kevin Rothstein
DEDHAM (
) -- State police and prosecutors sought to charge a Massachusetts district court judge with larceny earlier this year after surveillance video at Logan Airport showed her taking another traveler's Cartier watch, but a clerk magistrate declined to let the charge issue and instead found there wasn't enough evidence to proceed with the case.
The Feb. 25 incident at Terminal B spelled the end of Judge Patricia Curtin's time hearing cases on the bench, but after essentially being cleared by the magistrate she worked in an administrative function until retiring Aug. 4. That let her stay on the job long enough to start receiving a raise that applied to all judges on July 1, a raise which in turn boosted her pension by $10,000 a year.
Public scrutiny of the incident is only now possible after a lengthy records battle by FOX Undercover to obtain the State Police report and accompanying surveillance video, which shows Judge Curtin removing a watch from a bin that had just gone through one of the scanning machines at Terminal B, full of another woman's belongings.
The other woman can be seen emptying her items from the bin, but apparently left behind what she later described to State Police as an "older Cartier watch" worth $4,000.
In the video, Judge Curtin is seen taking the watch from the bin and holding it up to a uniformed TSA employee, who has her back to the judge. The police report indicates she said something, but in any case the TSA agent does not respond.
Judge Curtin returns the watch to the bin and starts to walk away, but then returns to the bin, takes the watch and walks off.
State Police caught up with her a half-hour later at the American Airlines VIP lounge, the Admirals Club, where she was sitting, reading a newspaper. She readily admitted having a watch that wasn't hers.
"'I have it right here,'" she told State Police, according to their report.
Asked by Trooper William A. Thompson, Jr., to produce identification, Judge Curtin produced two forms, according to the report: her driver's license as well as her district court identification card, which would have noted her position as a judge.
Questioned why she didn't notify TSA officials about the watch, she replied, "'I tried but they were too busy,'" according to the report.
"'I was trying to get my bags, and with all the confusion, I placed the watch in my bag,'" she said, according to the report. "'It was an honest mistake.'"
The trooper asked why, with all the law enforcement personnel in the airport, she didn't turn in the watch sooner.
"She replied that she tried to but 'everything was so busy and moving so fast,'" the report quotes her as saying.
But the trooper who interviewed her also watched the video, and was skeptical of her explanation.
"Based on the video, I formed the opinion that (the Judge) had substantial opportunity to return the watch to the TSA and failed to do so," Trooper Thompson wrote.
Judge Curtin was allowed to continue on with her flight to Hong Kong, and the watch was returned to its rightful owner.
Asked about the incident outside her Cape Cod home, now-retired Judge Curtin was in no mood to talk about it.
"Can you tell us why you took the watch?" FOX Undercover reporter Mike Beaudet asked her, but she didn't reply.
"Ma'am, if you were trying to return it, why'd you walk away with it? Can you just answer a few questions? We're just trying to understand your side of the story," Beaudet said, but Curtin never answered. Her attorney also did not return messages.
The story of the incident at Logan nearly never came to light. The State Police denied FOX Undercover's public records request for their report of the incident, saying the report was not public because no one had been charged. The Secretary of State agreed, ruling in the State Police's favor after FOX Undercover appealed.
The only public clue about the incident was a brief mention in the State Police log from the day, noting that a "Patricia Curtin" was going to be issued a criminal summons for larceny.
It wasn't until FOX Undercover asked Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley about the incident, and whether Curtin received special treatment from his office, did the records become public. Through a spokesman, Conley adamantly denied offering any special treatment, noting it was his office that agreed with State Police to try and charge Curtin.
Conley's office also took a different view of the records' public availability, saying so long as identifying information was removed the State Police report and video were, in fact, public records.
The secrecy that surrounded the case until last week was troubling to former Boston Police Superintendent-in-Chief Daniel Linskey.
"Something seems fishy here?" Beaudet asked him.
"If you're looking at it from the outside it certainly does," Linskey said.
Linskey, who encountered incidents of police officers accused of wrongdoing during his time on the job, said transparency is key when dealing with cases involving public officials.
"It's critical to be transparent both for their benefit and the department's benefit to make sure we're dotting I's and crossing T's, especially when somebody has some influence or power, just to make sure it's all above board," he said.
Within the criminal justice system, Judge Curtin's case never made it to a public forum.
East Boston District Court Clerk Magistrate Joseph Faretra decided against charging the judge with the felony, and held a closed-door hearing instead, a hearing at which the clerk magistrate himself looked at the evidence, including the video of the judge taking the watch, and decided it did not support a criminal charge.
FOX Undercover showed the State Police report to retired Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein, who now teaches at Suffolk University Law School.
"There's enough based on what I've seen that charges could have issued based on probable cause," he said. "If the District Attorney and the State Police that investigated this wanted it to go forward, one has to ask oneself: why was that decision made not to? Why were their requests rejected?"
Magistrate Faretra explained why he rejected the State Police's and the DA's bid to charge her.
"I saw her pick up a watch, and try to, try to return it and then later it got returned," he said in an interview.
"But she walked off with the watch, didn't she?" Beaudet asked him.
"She walked away, yes," Faretra replied.
"So that seems suspicious, doesn't it?" Beaudet asked.
"Her intent was to return it to a TSA person or a State Police office or someone. That was her intent. And it ended up that way," Faretra replied.
"Is she getting special treatment because of who she is?" Beaudet asked.
"Absolutely not," Faretra replied.
But things broke in Judge Curtin's favor again after the hearing.
She had been placed on leave, but after the April 18th hearing before Faretra she returned to work as an administrator until her Aug. 4th retirement.
Working that desk job for nearly four months carried a lucrative benefit. It allowed her to begin collecting the $30,000 annual raise that applied to all judges July 1.
Through a quirk in the state retirement system, judges need to work only a day at the new salary rate to create a dramatic increase in their annual pension.
So even though Curtin worked for just a month at her new annual salary of $160,000, it boosted her lifetime pension by $10,000 a year, to $104,000.
A spokesperson for the state Trial Court system would not explain why Curtin did not hear cases after she was essentially cleared of theft except to say it was a "personnel matter."
The spokesperson also pointed out that the DA or the State Police could have appealed the Clerk Magistrate's decision to a judge, but neither did.
Curtin's attorney, David Eisenstadt, is a well-known criminal defense attorney who is also friendly with DA Conley and is a regular contributor to the DA's campaign account. But the DA's spokesman, Jake Wark, said the DA never discussed the case with Conley and pointed to the DA's decision to charge her in the first place as evidence that Judge Curtin received no special treatment.
"Neither the subject's employment nor her choice of attorney ever factored in our decisions. The record clearly shows we treated this case as we would any other with the same facts and evidence," Wark said.
Judge Borenstein doesn't know if Judge Curtin retired because of the Logan incident, but says the lack of information from the some parts of state government about Judge Curtin's brush with the law is troubling.
"Is this person being treated the same way anyone else would have been treated? That's where people's minds go when you keep them from getting information," he said.
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