I copied this article from Mass Lawyers Weekly, a subscription only news site. I don’t find it good practice to paste articles, but Rick is a friend and colleague of mine, as is the author, Dave Frank .
Time served: In and out of jail for years, ex-con turns life around as trial attorney
By David E. Frank, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly
Published: November 9, 2009
Richard J. Dyer speaks to his new client through the bars of an all-too-familiar Brighton District Court holding cell. The Newton lawyer begins the conversation in the dingy hallway by telling the 51-year-old man, who’s waiting to be arraigned on heroin possession charges, that it’s a pleasure to meet him. When the puzzled client asks why, Dyer tells him that addicts usually don’t live to be his age. “Most of them die,” Dyer says. “And that’s what is going to happen to you. There is a reason there aren’t old junkies: because heroin will kill you.” Before they even discuss the case that has brought them both to the Academy Hill courthouse, the quick-talking, high-strung Dyer convinces the man to return to a Quincy drug-rehab program that is holding a bed for him. By the time Judge David T. Donnelly signs off on the request, which includes a promise from the lawyer that he will personally drive his client to the facility, it’s clear that 57-year-old Dyer, today a successful criminal and family law attorney, is no stranger to the life of a drug addict. For much of his teens and early 20s, Dyer found himself on the wrong side of the justice system, often in the same Brighton lockup where he now meets with clients. “We used to say that as long as Ricky’s out there, we’ve got a job,” says his former probation officer, Mel Briggs. “My feeling back then was that he either was going to end up dead or he was going to get it,” he says. “I wouldn’t have bet on him. But to see where he is now and look at all of his accomplishments, I feel like a proud father at graduation. When I first saw him come into my courthouse as a lawyer, my jaw nearly dropped to the floor.” Flashbacks For more than 25 years, anxiety attacks made it nearly impossible for Dyer to appear in Brighton District Court. Even when he was finally able to reconcile “all the bad things” that had happened to him there as a young man, he avoided conducting business inside the courthouse. “Going into that courtroom was very difficult because of the flashbacks,” he says. “I had been over there a few times on some matters for my former law partner, John Palmer, but I couldn’t stay.” He says he would look to the left of the judge’s bench and see the old holding cell where he had stood on many an occasion, “shaking and shivering, sick from heroin. My poor mother would show up no matter what, with a shirt and tie to try to make me look as good as I could. I still have a hard time looking over to where she would sit in the back of the courtroom.” Briggs, who currently works in Stoughton District Court, remembers Dyer as a young “hell raiser” with no direction. When word spread of a theft in Allston-Brighton, Dyer – who received his high-school equivalency degree in 1973 while incarcerated at the Deer Island House of Correction – and his buddies were the usual suspects, the probation officer says. Most of those guys are dead now, having overdosed on drugs, passed away in prison or succumbed to AIDS, Dyer says. One of his closest friends, Michael Principe, was shot to death while Dyer was being held on bail awaiting trial. “I don’t want to sound harsh, but Ricky was a loser,” Briggs says. “I’d spot him in the street on a Friday and say to myself, ‘We’ll be seeing him in the lockup on Monday.’ He was in here every week.” Dyer would regularly show up at Briggs’ office, strung out on drugs and pleading for help. And while Dyer’s early efforts to rehabilitate himself failed, the probation officer says, it was not for lack of trying. “There would be times when Rick would come in and just cry,” he says. “He wouldn’t have an excuse. He’d just have that smile. He’d tell me that he was strung out. He’d been drinking. ‘I have a problem.’” ‘Kind of a con artist’ Despite Dyer’s repeated run-ins with the law, Boston attorney David Sokol says it was that smile that endeared him to many in the Brighton court system. “He was a wild, bright-eyed, fiery, intense, extremely personable whirlwind of a person. He had life experiences unlike anyone I had ever known,” says Sokol, who represented Dyer in a 1975 motor vehicle case in which his probation was terminated. “Ricky was born to the streets and led a life of crime and had experiences with people that we only see in movies,” he says. “He knew more things about aspects of life than the total sum of all the attorneys I had met in my life.” John D. Yellin, a Newton lawyer who represented Dyer in a number of criminal matters, says Dyer’s struggles especially resonated with Brighton’s longtime presiding judge, Charles J. “Chick” Artesani. When prosecutors and probation officers recommended harsh sentences, the judge often opted for treatment programs instead. “Rick was kind of a con artist back then in the sense that he could sweet talk his way out of things that others couldn’t, and there would be times that his ability to stay out of jail would infuriate some of the probation officers,” Yellin says. “But with the amount of trouble he was getting himself into, there were also times that he gave the judge no choice but to lock him up.” Former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis says Artesani deserves much of the credit for Dyer’s success today – and for his decision to pardon Dyer in 1983. “For a Chick Artesani to sense something in this kid when he was in big trouble, to basically take him in hand with a good deal of discipline as well as compassion, says quite a lot about him,” Dukakis says of Dyer. “I have some people I pardoned or commuted that weren’t successes like Rick, and it lives with you forever. So when there are success stories like this, it’s important that we talk about [them] and celebrate them.” Getting high, stealing cars With multiple felony convictions on his record, Dyer made his living back in the day as a common thief. His criminal record includes entries in Brighton, Framingham, Brookline, Natick, Orleans, Marlborough, Waltham, Roxbury and Boston Municipal Court for operating under the influence, breaking and entering, use of a car without authority, disorderly conduct, driving without a license and larceny of motor vehicles. “I could start almost any car there was,” he recalls. “I made attempt after attempt to try to get straightened out, and when I couldn’t do it, I always went back to what I knew best, which was getting high, stealing cars and selling them.” A childhood pal, Jimmy Cox, says the pair had a master key that allowed them to make off with almost any MG, Jaguar or Triumph they could find. “We weren’t against stealing GMs either,” Cox says. “Another one that was very easy was Volkswagens. We thought all automobiles should be socialized, which was just putting a nice spin on the fact that we were car thieves. It wasn’t occasionally; it was daily.” Dyer says he still remembers the master key’s serial number, FT70, “like it was my Social Security number.” Their partnership in crime finally came to an end in the mid-1970s when Cox received a life sentence for second-degree murder. (Years later, Dyer would successfully represent Cox at his parole hearing.) Dyer recalls learning about Cox’s conviction while he was being treated in the Charles Street Jail infirmary. “I told one of the nurses how bad I felt about Jimmy getting a life sentence and explained to her that I could never do one,” he says. “I’ll never forget it. She turned to me and said, ‘What do you think you’re doing? You’re doing life on the installment plan.’” Unfit to practice? The conversation with the jailhouse nurse was one of several Dyer had with concerned people he met along the way that started him on the long path toward turning his life around. But broke, addicted to drugs and homeless – his heartbroken mother and Boston firefighter father kicked him out of the house when he was 14 – Dyer says he couldn’t stay clean. He remembers one especially low point when he passed out under a bench, strung out on dope, while waiting to get into a Salvation Army shelter in Boston’s South End. Then, while doing yet another stint behind bars, Dyer crossed paths with someone who would help change the course of his life. “A Black Panther who I was locked up with told me one day that the key to my success was going to be education,” he says. “He told me I could qualify for scholarships because of my alcoholism.” With financial assistance from the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Services, Dyer attended Boston State College, graduating with honors in 1978. By then, he was clean and had begun volunteering at the Northeastern University School of Law Prisoners’ Rights Project, working alongside the likes of Nancy Gertner (now a federal judge), Jonathan Shapiro, Harvey A. Silverglate and John G. Flym. Those people, Dyer says, encouraged him to take the next step and apply to law school. After receiving a round of rejections the first year, Dyer applied again and was admitted to Northeastern. (Officials at other law schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania, told him they could not accept him out of concern that he would sue if he were not admitted to the bar.) He graduated in 1983, only to come up against an unforgiving Board of Bar Overseers, certain members of which were concerned that his criminal record would make him unfit to practice. But with the help of Judge Artesani, Palmer, Yellin and others he had met along the way, Dyer applied for and received a governor’s pardon on July 6, 1983. V. Joyce Hooley, a former Parole Board member who was in charge of pardons and commutations at the time, says Dyer is the only applicant she can recall ever to apply for a pardon in an effort to obtain a law degree. Hooley remembers meeting with Dyer and his parents and being “blown away” about how far he had come. “I was really impressed that he was already in law school and had been sober for several years,” she says. “It was pretty risky to go through all that education and hard work without any assurances that it would all be legitimized.” ‘I can do it, too’ In a recent interview at the former Charles Street Jail on Boston’s Beacon Hill – now the swank Liberty Hotel – Dyer says he still suffers from terrifying “jail dreams.” “I’ll be sleeping, and all of a sudden it’s as if I’m really back there walking down the third tier of Deer Island,” says the father of six. “The windows are all broken, there is cold air coming in, and I’m walking down trying to figure out my next move.” Dyer becomes emotional as he stands in front of an old cell in the hotel’s upscale restaurant, Alibi. He’s flooded with bad memories, like the time he was 19 and state police officers brought him to Charles Street while he was suffering from alcoholic neuritis, a mental disorder that results from the constant over-consumption of liquor. “I had lost the use of my legs due to inflammation in the nervous system, so instead of bringing me in through the back door where the prisoner van comes in, two cops had to carry me in through the front door, with disgusted looks on their faces, and dump me off here,” he says pointing to the cell. “They say that I was the last guy at the Charles Street Jail to be given a shot of valeraldehyde to stop the DTs.” Dyer says he had an epiphany years later, while watching “60 Minutes” at a halfway house in Fall River. The segment was about a Juvenile Court judge in California who had overcome a history of convictions to earn a seat on the bench. “I told myself that if he could do it, I can do it, too,” he says. And that’s why Dyer is coming forward to tell his story, something he has shied away from for years. “No matter what I’ve ever tried to do, the only thing that ever seems to work for me is to give back,” says Dyer, whose practice includes representing teens with backgrounds similar to his own. “If I can touch one person’s life that can hear my story and get some kind of hope to change their life, then I’m a success today.” Gary R. Greenberg, co-managing partner of Greenberg Traurig in Boston, has known Dyer for more than two decades and believes he deserves a judgeship of his own. “He is smart, has unique insight into our juvenile justice system and the youth that come before the courts, and I have certainly advocated that Rick be considered for a judgeship in the Juvenile Court,” he says. “His presence on the bench would be tangible proof to the young people and families that come before the courts that they can turn their lives around and become the productive member of society that Rick has.” While Dyer declines to discuss any judicial aspirations, he says he has been sober for 30 years, helping clients, friends and others battle their own addictions. “I have passed the stage where half of my life has been worth living,” he says. “My life was an embarrassment. I came from good parents and people that cared about me more than I cared about myself. Today I have dignity. I have self-esteem. I have pride.”
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