WORCESTER — Three years ago Monday, the lawyer who handles appeals for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. reached out to a colleague in Boston to ask about that office’s long-running conviction integrity unit.
“We have to get something going here,” the Worcester prosecutor, Jane A. Sullivan, wrote in an email just before 1 p.m. on April 19, 2018.
Pineiro alleged that police in those units routinely use excessive force, lie in reports, exhibit racial animus and fabricate evidence, and that Early was violating defendants’ rights by failing to inform them of officers whose credibility was suspect.
Records obtained by the Telegram & Gazette show that Early would, within a month of receiving Pineiro’s complaint, assign a prosecutor to look into its claims and add a section to his website referencing a “Litigation Integrity Division.”