A federal jury needed about three and a half hours on September 2 to acquit Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins of both extortion counts against him. The verdict ended a case that had kept the elected head of the county jail system on leave for more than a year, and it returned to office a sheriff whose department holds many of the people arrested in Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop.
The allegation
The indictment, returned in June 2025, told a specific story. In September 2019 Tompkins signed a letter establishing a partnership between the Sheriff’s Department and a cannabis company, identified in court as Ascend Wellness Holdings, which the company used in its March 2020 application to the Cannabis Control Commission for a Boston dispensary license. In November 2020, prosecutors said, Tompkins wired $50,000 from his retirement account to buy about 28,883 pre-IPO shares at $1.73 each. When Ascend went public in mid-2021 at $9.60 a share, the stake was worth about $138,000 on paper. Then the stock fell. Between May 2022 and July 2023, the government said, Tompkins demanded and received his full $50,000 back from the executive, Frank Perullo, in five checks, some marked “loan repayment.”
The theory was extortion under color of official right: that Perullo paid because he feared Tompkins would end the partnership and jeopardize the license and the IPO. Each count carried up to 20 years. Tompkins was arrested in Florida in August 2025 and took leave, with Mark Lawhorne, an assistant superintendent, designated special sheriff to run the department.
The trial
The case was tried over a week and a half at the Moakley Courthouse. Prosecutors framed the risk-free investment itself as the abuse. “The power to make an investment in a startup cannabis company, totally risk free, that’s power,” one told the jury. On the refund: “Frank is the last person who wants to give $50,000 back.”
Defense attorney Martin Weinberg argued that Perullo was a sophisticated businessman who was not easily intimidated, that he repaid in installments over more than a year, which is not how a frightened man behaves, and that Ascend’s license did not depend on the sheriff’s letter. He told jurors there was no quid pro quo and no corrupt intent, and asked them to “give this man his life back.” After the verdict he said, “Suffolk County has their sheriff back.” Tompkins, through Weinberg, said he was grateful the jury reached the correct result.
Why it matters here
The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department runs the Suffolk County House of Correction and the Nashua Street Jail, and it holds pretrial detainees and sentenced inmates from Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop as well as Boston. Tompkins has held the job since 2013, when Governor Deval Patrick appointed him to fill a vacancy, and has won election since. Under state law an indictment did not remove him; conviction would have. Acquittal means he resumes an office he never legally left.
The department under his leadership was known for reentry and community programs, and the Ascend partnership was, on its face, one of them: a cannabis company agreeing to work with the jail on hiring and training. The trial turned on whether the sheriff’s personal investment turned that partnership into leverage. The jury said the government had not proven it.
What is left is political rather than legal. The sheriff’s next election is in 2028.
For the three communities on this side of the harbor, the practical question is continuity: whether the programs Lawhorne ran during the year of interim leadership survive the transition back, and whether a sheriff who spent thirteen months fighting a federal case comes back to the job with the same agenda. The department has not yet announced a date for Tompkins’s return to full duty.
Sources: WBUR, September 2, 2026 (Eve Zuckoff); GBH News, September 2 and 3, 2026 (Amanda Keane); Commonwealth Beacon and State House News Service, September 3, 2026 (Sam Drysdale); U.S. Attorney’s Office and IRS Criminal Investigation, June 17, 2025 indictment announcement; Boston.com, September 3, 2026. Photo: John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, September 2024, by 4300streetcar via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.