Will Sheriff Steven Tompkins keep his job? The answer may lie in a decades

The sheriff stood accused of extortion, and the governor of Massachusetts wanted him out.

The year was 1994, and then-Middlesex Sheriff John P. McGonigle was fighting to keep his job in the face of a federal indictment. Governor William Weld and Attorney General Scott Harshbarger sought to suspend him, but ultimately lost.

That June, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made the law clear : if the sheriff doesn’t want to resign, only the SJC itself or the voters can kick him out or place him on leave.

“We hold that where the sheriff is an elected official, the Governor was not an ‘appointing authority’ and, accordingly, lacked the power to suspend” him under the law, wrote Paul J. Liacos, then the chief justice.

More than three decades later, this case provides the precedent fo