Earlier this month, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced several nominations to the state’s superior court, coming amid calls to fill dozens of vacancies in courthouses across the state. Among the five nominees is a Northampton resident serving as chief of a local branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
Over the years, Deepika Shukla has gone from serving as a plaintiffs’ civil rights attorney at the Connecticut Fair Housing Center to working as an Assistant United States Attorney and chief of the Springfield branch at the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
Earlier this month, though, she learned she was being tapped by the governor to serve as an associate justice on the state’s superior court.
“I want you all to know how honored I am to be sitting here before you,” Shukla said, speaking briefly during a public confirmation hearing at Western New England University’s School of Law Monday –where she serves as an adjunct professor. “When Governor Healy told me that she would be nominating me to serve the Commonwealth as an Associate Justice of the Superior Court, I blurted out ‘You made my year!’ I immediately felt foolish, but really, it was an understatement.”
The event was an informal hearing held by Governor’s Council member and District 8 representative, Tara Jacobs of North Adams.
Shukla will be interviewed by the Governor’s Council on Wednesday at 10. Ahead of the interview, Jacobs says Monday’s event served as a chance for the public to interact and learn more about the potential justice directly.
“It's an effort towards accountability and transparency, but most important, accessibility, because some people will come out to Boston to testify on behalf of our nominee, but for those for whom the state house is too far, to hold a hearing locally really just increases the ability for people to share their own understanding and knowledge of the nominees,” she explained.
Throughout the evening, colleagues, public defenders and community members testified to Shukla’s background.
Over the years, Shukla has “represented the U.S. in criminal prosecutions of violations of excessive force, hate crime, terrorism, fraud, and violent crime statutes,” according to Healey’s office.
Some speakers detailed her experience prosecuting police officers who have used force against detainees, as well as investigating the Springfield Police Department's former Narcotics Unit, which came under federal investigation and was found in 2020 to have engaged in a “pattern or practice of excessive force,” among other findings.
Among those speaking was Assistant Federal Public Defender Tim Watkins, who described Shukla as a figure capable of great temperament, intellect, and more.
“… thoughtfulness, and Deepika has that in spades,” he said. “As you know, Councilor Jacobs, and many people in this room, that federal prosecutors are given nuclear weapons by a Congress where by and large, they can call the tune about where somebody ends up at the end of the day. So much of the advocacy for my clients will be spent in begging, or trying to persuade somebody as to what the right thing to do in a case. Deepika was has always been a very good ear for that.
Also stopping by: retired first justice of the Springfield District Court in Massachusetts, the honorable John Payne.
“As a member of the judicial nominating commission, I had the opportunity to do the due diligence on this candidate,” Payne said. “And I want to tell you that nothing but extraordinary things were said about her, not only by her colleagues in the U.S. Attorney's Office, but also by people that knew her in other capacities.”
After some 90 minutes of testimony, the public hearing came to an end. Shukla declined an interview with WAMC, with a hope of speaking after Wednesday’s Governor’s Council interview.
With the nominee preparing for the next step in the nomination process, Jacobs, of North Adams, says the five recent superior court nominations are a step in the right direction.
Still, on the heels of her call for more nominees, Jacobs says there is plenty of work to be done still.
“There's still a lot of openings … and we need to have more nominees continue to come through,” she said. “I will say five goes a long way towards filling some of the gap that we have on Superior Court - there's still seven openings left, which is still significant - but I'm so happy that the governor did move on bringing nominees to council, and I'm especially happy that one of them is for Western Mass, and not just Western Mass, but this nominee in particular.
“I will say I think I think we're going to see the courts move a little more efficiently – there's still openings to fill,” she added.
According to Jacobs, Shukla is the fifth Western Mass nomination that Healey has made.
