Plymouth DA releases misconduct disclosure about Brockton lieutenant’s false statements in drug case
Newly released “Brady” disclosure about Matthew Graham describes “materially false” statements in drug case
The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office created a misconduct disclosure about a Brockton police lieutenant more than two years after a Massachusetts judge found that the officer made “materially false” statements in a sworn affidavit when applying for a search warrant a decade ago.
Prosecutors are required to provide criminal defendants with “Brady” disclosures—named after a 1963 US Supreme Court decision—about alleged misconduct by officers testifying against them so that defendants can challenge the officers’ credibility in court. Records show that Plymouth County prosecutors drafted a disclosure about a judge’s finding that Brockton Police Lieutenant Matthew Graham made false statements in a drug case after the Massachusetts Appeals Court adopted the determination years later.
In a December 2023 ruling, a Plymouth County Superior Court judge found that Graham included false statements in the affidavit when he claimed that he and another officer took part in a controlled heroin buy at a Brockton apartment building. Records showed that the second officer wasn’t on duty at the time and thus could not have been present, according to the ruling.
In a subsequent ruling, the judge declined to grant a new trial to the defendant in the drug case, Allah Mallory, when the evidence of misconduct came to light after he was convicted. However, the Appeals Court ruled in April that because Graham’s false statements invalidated the warrant, Mallory’s drug convictions must be thrown out.
The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against Mallory on May 20, according to court records.
On July 21, Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney Karen Palumbo released two Brady disclosures about Graham in response to a records request after previously saying that the district attorney’s office did not possess any such documents. Palumbo said her original July 1 response “was in error.”
One of the newly released disclosures discusses Graham’s false statements in the Mallory case. The document is an undated template, but it quotes the Appeals Court ruling from April—meaning it was not created until at least two years and four months after the lower-court judge made his 2023 findings about Graham’s misconduct. A copy of the Appeals Court decision was attached to the disclosure, but no copy of the lower-court decision was included.
Palumbo said the disclosure was the only version of the document possessed by the district attorney’s office.
It’s unclear whether prosecutors have provided the disclosure to any criminal defendants. In response to the records request, Palumbo said that the district attorney’s office does “not track the cases in which the disclosures are provided.”
“The [Brady disclosure] templates are found in a central location and all of the [assistant district attorneys] in the office have access to those templates,” Palumbo said.
A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office did not respond to emailed questions.
Palumbo also provided a second undated disclosure about Graham that she described as being older. According to the document, Graham was charged with assault and battery on a child with injury in Brockton District Court in January 1997. Graham pleaded to sufficient facts in April 1997, and a judge continued the case without a finding and placed him on probation for a year, the document says. The court subsequently dismissed the case in April 1998, according to online court records.
Graham did not respond to emailed questions.
In response to the records request, the district attorney’s office did not provide what its website describes as a “Brady Database” with information about police misconduct, including “judicial findings that specifically call into question an officer’s credibility as a witness.” Palumbo said on July 1 that the request for the database lacked specificity because it “[did] not define or limit which records” the Dump was seeking.
After the Dump filed an appeal with the supervisor of public records, the transparency watchdog who serves in the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office, Palumbo said on July 21 that the website’s use of the term “Brady Database” was “inaccurate.”
“We are in the process of changing the website to reflect the fact that the [district attorney’s office] has ‘Brady Information’ which is contained in Microsoft Word documents and not a database that tracks all of the disclosures,” she said.
The Dump asked Palumbo for copies of these Brady documents on July 28 but has not yet heard back from her.
In the Mallory case, when Graham applied for a search warrant in April 2016, the officer wrote in an affidavit that he arranged three controlled drug buys at a Brockton apartment building, court records say. Each time, a confidential informant would call Mallory in the presence of Graham and a second officer, order heroin, and enter the apartment to buy the drugs using money Graham provided, according to the affidavit.
Graham said that the other officer present for the third controlled buy was Brockton Detective Brian Donahue.
However, after a jury found Mallory guilty, his post-conviction attorney obtained time sheets for Graham and Donahue. The time sheets in conjunction with Mallory’s phone records showed that on the day of the alleged third controlled buy, he did not receive any calls during the four-hour period when the two detectives’ work schedules overlapped.
After holding a hearing related to the time-sheet evidence, Plymouth County Superior Court Justice Mark Gildea ruled in December 2023 that Graham had included “materially false” statements in the affidavit by saying that Donahue was present. Gildea, the same judge who presided over Mallory’s trial, wrote that Graham “was, at a minimum, reckless” by including the false statements.
Gildea ruled that the information about the alleged third controlled buy should not have been included in the affidavit. And in a September 2024 decision, the judge found that this meant the warrant was stale when police executed it because of how much time had passed since the alleged second controlled buy.
However, Gildea rejected Mallory’s bid for a new trial.
In Massachusetts, a defendant may obtain a new trial either by presenting important evidence that was not available at the time of the original trial or by showing that their trial lawyer was unusually ineffective.
Gildea ruled that Mallory’s trial lawyer wasn’t ineffective by not seeking out the officers’ time sheets. But the judge also found that the time sheets were not newly discovered evidence because the trial lawyer could have sought them out. He also concluded that there was no evidence Graham’s statements were “knowingly” or “intentionally” false, writing that the officer’s statements could have been due to “inadvertent error.”
The Appeals Court reversed Gildea’s decision, finding that the time sheets were newly discovered evidence. The justices ruled that the warrant was invalid and the evidence obtained from the search must be suppressed, entitling Mallory to a new trial.
In Mallory’s Appeals Court brief, his post-conviction attorney wrote in a footnote that drugs from the alleged controlled buys “were destroyed in the midst of the new-trial litigation where the occurrence of the controlled buys was at issue.” The attorney said the destruction of the drugs violated the duty to preserve evidence. Other information in the footnote was redacted.
It is unclear from the brief who ordered the destruction of the alleged drugs.
Much information about the Mallory case remains shrouded in secrecy, with many of the court records—including transcripts from the 2023 post-conviction hearing—having been sealed by the Superior Court.
On July 6, the New England Innocence Project filed a lawsuit seeking to unseal the records to learn more about the misconduct by Graham.
The lawsuit named as defendants the Clerk of Courts for Plymouth County, the district attorney’s office, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, and Mallory, all of whom must be included since they are interested parties.
The New England Innocence Project has since agreed to drop Mallory as a defendant because he agrees that the records should be released, according to a July 17 stipulation submitted by attorneys for both parties.
Brockton Police Chief Brenda Perez promoted Graham to lieutenant in April 2024, four months after Gildea ruled that the officer had included false information in the affidavit, according to city council meeting minutes.
A spokesperson for the Brockton Police Department did not respond to emailed questions.
The police department has not yet responded to June 17 requests for Graham and Donahue’s internal affairs records, even though the state’s Public Records Law requires it to respond within 10 business days. On July 13, after the Dump appealed, the supervisor of public records ordered the department to respond to the requests within 10 business days—a deadline that has since lapsed.
Online records of the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission show that both Graham and Donahue have valid law-enforcement certification and continue to be employed by the department.
The POST Commission’s online disciplinary database, which was last updated on July 2, does not list any findings of misconduct by Graham or Donahue. A police department is only required to report allegations of misconduct to the POST Commission if its own internal investigation determines that wrongdoing occurred.
Asked whether the POST Commission is conducting its own review of Graham’s conduct in the Mallory case, a spokesperson said in June that the agency “cannot confirm or deny the existence of any investigation and cannot comment on matters that may be pending.”
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If you haven’t read it yet, check out another recent story I wrote using Brady records:
A retired Granby police lieutenant entered into an agreement with the state’s police oversight board on July 16 to never again work in law enforcement after he allegedly paid a subordinate officer and a dispatcher to complete his college coursework for him, made sexually explicit comments in front of subordinate officers and department employees, and used his truck to intimidate an officer who filed a complaint against him.
An outside investigation found that the former lieutenant, Gary Poehler, boosted his pay by obtaining two degrees after having police department employees write papers and take exams for him, records say.
Andrew Quemere
That’s all for now.
