Amy Fairfield, an attorney in Lyman, photographed in Portland in 2021. The Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar has put Fairfield on probation for six months for violating professional conduct rules. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

A prominent defense lawyer in southern Maine has been placed on probation by the Maine Bar after alleging state prosecutors and the Maine State Police Crime Lab were hiding exculpatory evidence in one of her cases.

Attorney Amy Fairfield was reprimanded Monday by a panel for the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar, which found that she violated several rules of professional conduct during the course of a post-conviction review first filed in 2018. The panel agreed Fairfield made unfounded, inflammatory allegations against the state, missed important filing deadlines for using witnesses, and violated court orders that certain state employee records remain under seal.

Fairfield agreed to enter a six-month probation period, during which she could face stiffer penalties should she fail to comply with the state’s rules of professional conduct for licensed lawyers.

But Fairfield said Thursday that she still believes in the allegations she made. Many of her actions described in the decision unfolded during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic while under lockdown, and she said the stakes for her client were high because there are not a lot of appeal options after a post-conviction review.

“I had a good-faith basis for what I wrote and I stood by every word,” Fairfield said in a phone interview. “I just could have used softer language.”

It’s the first time in Fairfield’s 20-year career that she’s faced any discipline from the board, the panel noted in Monday’s order, although she’s currently defending herself against a lawsuit by the state that accuses her of overbilling for public defense work. Fairfield has previously said the lawsuit is unfounded and a clear conflict of interest because the state is being represented by the Office of the Maine Attorney General, which is often the target of her complaints.

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office declined to discuss the disciplinary action.

Shannon Moss, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety, which includes the state police crime lab, thanked the panel for its “thoughtful and detailed review of the facts in this case.”

“The lab remains an iconic Maine institution of highly qualified scientists and professional public servants,” Moss wrote in an email. “Maine citizens should rest assured that the lab maintains a steadfast commitment to objectivity and will continue to be a model of integrity in all cases large or small.”

A PANDEMIC

Fairfield has taken on a number of high-profile criminal defense cases in her career. In 2017, her post-conviction work led a major witness in the murder case against Anthony Sanborn to recant, and prosecutors agreed to release Sanborn from prison on time served – although his conviction stands.

But the panel’s decision relates to her work on the post-conviction review for Jay Mercier, who was found guilty of murder in 2012.

It was Maine’s oldest cold case at the time. Police said they could prove he killed Rita St. Peter in 1980 because DNA from a cigarette in his home matched DNA found on St. Peter’s body.

Fairfield argued that a former Maine State Crime Lab employee had contaminated that DNA evidence and she alleged that the state knew this and kept that exculpatory evidence from Mercier during his trial and afterward.

Fairfield also said the state kept more than 100 photos from Mercier during his trial. She thought they were exculpatory, but Superior Court Justice Robert Mullen found they weren’t relevant and there was no evidence they had been withheld on purpose.

The lab employee had already resigned years earlier after it was discovered that he had contaminated evidence in other cases – but, there was nothing to suggest that he had contaminated DNA evidence in Mercier’s case, Mullen later ruled.

Yet Fairfield continued to raise allegations that the crime lab knew about the contamination, that they were manufacturing evidence and “cooking the books.” She accused prosecutors with the attorney general’s office of preventing her from speaking with lab employees, whom she wanted to use as witnesses.

The grievance decision states that Fairfield agreed she had always been able to connect with these lab employees. But on Thursday she said it had still been difficult, in the middle of a heated legal battle during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“How, in the middle of a pandemic, do I go out in public, number one, and number two, have these people who are averse to my position sign an affidavit for a hearing in this matter?” Fairfield said. “I couldn’t do it.”

INFLAMMATORY STATEMENTS

In November 2020, Mullen criticized Fairfield for failing to provide signed affidavits for her proposed witnesses, showing their ties to the case. Yet she continued challenging Mullen’s previous orders, promising “alarming findings” about the crime lab from expert witnesses.

“It is difficult for the undersigned to understate the amount of vitriol contained in the document that (Fairfield) filed … other than to opine that the undersigned in over 40 years of practice in Maine courts has never read a document quite like it,” Mullen wrote in his November 2020 order.

Fairfield’s allegations included a “systemic suppression of evidence,” “covering up the truth,” “corruption that worked to secure (Mercier’s) conviction and launch the careers of those involved in his trial” and a “sham” trial “built on lies, manufactured evidence, and fraud upon the Court.”

“There also has been scant, if any, evidence presented to the Court to support the incendiary rhetoric of Petitioner’s counsel,” Mullen wrote.

But Fairfield remains adamant that she has evidence. She shared a report from a DNA expert in December 2020, detailing his concerns with the quality of the state’s DNA testing technology and samples.

Mullen didn’t let her call that witness and eventually denied Mercier’s post-conviction appeal in January 2022.

In its ruling, the panel said Fairfield’s conduct impacted her client’s case.

“Attorney Fairfield’s conduct in violation of the Maine Rules of Professional Conduct impacted her PCR client case, the interests of third parties, other counsel, and the Courts,” the grievance decision states.

She argues it was the panel that negatively affected her client, creating conflicts of interest that prevent her from representing him pro bono in federal court for future appeals.