Citing ethics advisory opinion, Jubinville stepping aside from clerk job for DA run

Robert Jubinville, the Framingham District Court clerk-magistrate, took a leave from the job this week to fully throw himself into running in the seven-candidate derby for Norfolk DA.

Jubinville, a Milton Democrat, said he decided to take the leave after an opinion from a committee appointed by the Supreme Judicial Court suggested there was a potential conflict with him running for DA while also serving as clerk-magistrate at the same time.

Ethics may be out the window at the national level – the Massachusetts Ethics Commission’s chief in 2025 cited an “unprecedented challenge” coming from Washington – but some locally still appear to be taking an extra step. In Jubinville’s telling, the Ethics Commission signed off on his run, but the SJC-appointed panel known as the Advisory Committee on Ethical Opinions for Clerks of the Courts, flagged some potential issues.

“Rather than ruffle anybody’s feathers, I said it’s better that I take a leave,” Jubinville said. He has been running for the office and fundraising for several months.

The SJC-appointed panel wrote in a March opinion that because the DA job is political, and an unelected clerk such as himself should be neutral, “your running for District Attorney, even in a different county, would cast doubt on your ability to impartially decide issues that may come before you in any official capacity.”

The panel published the opinion online, but stripped out identifying factors such as Jubinville’s name. It referenced a clerk running for DA, and Jubinville in a phone interview acknowledged he had requested the opinion.

The panel raised concerns that a law enforcement investigation could start in one county and eventually cross over into other counties, and he or the assistant clerks he supervises could be faced with deciding to issue a search warrant in the county where he’s running as DA. “Delegating these decisions to your assistant clerks would not cure the potential conflicts,” the panel wrote.

The panel’s members include an attorney, a Superior Court judge, and Barnstable’s register of probate, among others.

Jubinville worked for the State Police in the 1970s, graduated from Suffolk University Law School in 1977, starting a long career as an attorney. He served several terms on the independently elected Governor’s Council, which weighs in on the governor’s judicial appointments, before Gov. Charlie Baker appointed him Framingham clerk-magistrate in 2022.

Jubinville likely benefits from high name recognition in a crowded Democratic primary field looking to replace DA Mike Morrissey, as well as as a self-funded warchest.

Jubinville has previously made a bid for a job closer to his home in Milton: In 2024, he ran for Norfolk County clerk of courts against former Sen. Walter Timilty Jr. and lost by 433 votes.

Along with likely name recognition, he also has a healthy campaign account. He reported pulling in $176,000 this year into his campaign account; of that, he loaned himself $132,000.

The other Democratic primary candidates, many of them former prosecutors, include: Djuna Perkins, a former Suffolk prosecutor who was the first to jump in two years ago as Morrissey was under fire for his office’s handling of several controversial cases; Gregory Connor, a longtime Norfolk prosecutor who left his job earlier this year to run for DA; former Suffolk prosecutor Craig MacLellan; former assistant DA Macy Lee; former federal prosecutor Adam Deitch; and public defender Jim Barakat.

The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) is set to host a forum with nearly all of the candidates on June 9 at United Parish in Brookline. What are you seeing out there in the Norfolk DA’s race? My wife recently spotted one candidate’s lawn signage seemingly borrowing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s style. Send over your observations here: [email protected].

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