Rob Galibois, 52, a defense attorney with extensive ties to the Cape and Islands, has confirmed he will seek the Democratic nomination for Cape and Islands district attorney. “I am very excited about the days, weeks, and months ahead as I have an opportunity to demonstrate to the people of the Cape and Islands that my résumé qualifies me for this esteemed position,” Galibois told The Times. “One of my biggest priorities is community engagement.”
Galibois plans to officially announce his campaign next week. The confirmation that he intends to run comes two weeks after Cape and Island District Attorney Michael O’Keefe announced he would not seek re-election after nearly 20 years in office. O’Keefe took over for Phil Rollins, who created the Cape and Islands DA’s office, and held the position for 32 years.
The district attorney’s office has been under Republican control for more than 50 years, since Rollins backed legislation to split the Cape and Islands into its own district in 1974. But O’Keefe leaves with no apparent successor on the Republican side. His first assistant, Michael Trudeau, has let colleagues know he’s not a candidate.
There are no announced candidates for the Republican nomination. Sources have told The Times O’Keefe’s assistant district attorneys have been scrambling to find a potential candidate.
Galibois once served as an assistant district attorney in the superior court under Rollins, then O’Keefe, from 1997 to 2003. He served as a major felony prosecutor in Barnstable Superior Court, as well as a jury session prosecutor in the district court and lead prosecutor in Falmouth District Court. According to his résumé, Galibois trained new assistant district attorneys and prosecuted more than 100 cases to a jury verdict.
Since then, Galibois has become a well-known defense attorney on the Cape and Islands, the South Shore, and the South Coast. Most recently, and of note to Martha’s Vineyard residents, Galibois is the defense attorney for Joseph Noe, who is charged in the 2019 murder of Eric Voshell of Oak Bluffs — a kiling that allegedly involved two rival motorcycle gangs in a confrontation in Fall River.
Galibois, who currently has his own private practice based in Norwell, has been the lead attorney in more than a dozen murder cases. His caseload has included more than 2,000 cases, and he has argued for defendants in all of the state’s courts, including the Supreme Judicial Court.
He lives in Norwell, where he is a member of the Democratic Town Committee, with his wife, Nikki, and his sons, Max and Cam. Though he currently lives off-Cape, he plans to have a residence on the Cape by Feb. 1. Galibois previously lived for 18 years in Bourne, where he served on the town’s planning board. His children were born at Cape Cod Hospital, and he and his wife were married on the Cape.
Galibois is a 1988 graduate of Boston College High School, a 1992 graduate of UMass Amherst, and earned his juris doctorate at Massachusetts School of Law in 1995. He passed the bar that same year.
I like that he’s been a defense attorney, and thus likely to read through the creative fiction of “police reports”.
We’ve had enough knee-jerk bootlickers in that office, serving Martha’s Vineyard citizens (on a platter).
More data required, but we’ll investigate his background with an open mind.
I have had the pleasure of being represented by him twice and he has an impeccable background. It seems funny that you are always one to comment when it comes to legal or police representatives because you have had a run in with the local police. Take your punishment for your crimes and move on.stop berating everyone in the legal dept. just because you got caught.
Am I not free to comment?
What ‘punishment’ do I deserve?
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of “innocent until proven guilty?” (And certainly after one has been acquitted, as I have been. Perhaps the Times will one day print that curiously-absent disposition in the Court Report).
I fear for America’s future, if citizens choose to cower before authority, as you apparently have.
I will continue to call out these jackbooted bullies and thugs as long as they run their games on the people, and I would urge you, and all my neighbors, to do the same.
The corrupt ‘justice machine’ on this island is an OUTRAGE, and it is your DUTY to resist, refuse, confront, and confound it at every turn.
I. DO. NOT. WORK. FOR. THEM.
STAND UP.
O’Keefe has done a great job. It will be a loss. I hope to not see him replaced by a progressive. I am old enough to remember when the history books at least told the truth about Progressivism and the Democrats, the party of Jim Crow. Then they took over the public education system…
I remember when MV was Republican. A lot of the young guns today blame high cost of living and lack of opportunity etc on capitalism and boomers. That was never a problem back then. All of our problems started when MA, and eventually MV with it, went blue. It’s too bad the kids don’t know how good they could have it if they made the switch to the GOP. Or maybe they do, and that’s why they all go down to Florida to work and play all winter.
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2008/10/30/once-republican-stronghold-forest-democrats-grows-here
(Please forgive the link to the “competitor” but we are all in this together!)
Let’s not go that route with our new DA. Galibois’ party affiliation alone should be a red flag.
Reread the article and pay attention to Evertt’s comments about why he is no longer a republican. Then do some actual research into which party increases the deficit and which one decreases it.
Dear Mr. Matthews: Are you familiar with recent U.S. history? If not, here’s a quick review. Starting in the mid-1960s U.S. political parties underwent a major realignment. Until then the Democratic Party was an uneasy coalition. On one hand were liberals and moderates from the Northeast, Midwest, and West. On the other were the Southern Democrats. The South was a one-party region. The Southern Democrats were entirely white because Black people weren’t allowed to vote. They were Democrats because Lincoln was a Republican and Lincoln freed the slaves, for which the white South had never forgiven him. White Southern Democrat legislators typically ran unopposed term after term, which meant they built up serious seniority in Congress, which meant they controlled most of the important committees and thus Congress itself.
However, through the 1950s and into the ’60s, Black people in increasing numbers were challenging, legally and nonviolently, Jim Crow in education, transportation, and so on. (Google “Brown v. Board of Education,” “Montgomery bus boycott,” and “freedom riders” to learn more about this.) White southerners fought back, often violently (here you might look up “Emmett Till,” “Medgar Evers,” “Edmund Pettus Bridge,” and/or “16th Street Baptist Church”).
The rest of the country finally started paying attention. To make a long story short, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Supporters included Democrats and Republicans — but not the Southern Democrats, no way. In 1968, Southern Democrat George Wallace ran for president as an independent on an anti-civil-rights platform. Uh-oh, said Richard Nixon, who wanted the white southern vote for the GOP and came up with the “southern strategy” to get it. “Southern strategy” was a polite term for appealing to Southern Democrats by trying to out-racist George Wallace. It worked and kept working. Before long, most of the Democrats in the South were Black and all the former (white) Southern Democrats were Republican.
So you see, Mr. Marshall, today’s GOP has a lot in common with the Southern Democrats of yore, except they aren’t just in the South. And today’s Democrats are no more the party of Jim Crow than today’s Republicans are the party of Lincoln.
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