Media Center

June 12, 2026

Two Brookline Select Board members, Chair David Pearlman and Bernard Greene, have endorsed Djuna Perkins, one of six Democrats competing to become Norfolk County’s next district attorney.  Greene said Perkins distinguished herself early in the race by reaching out directly to Brookline officials and residents. “Early on in the process, she reached out to Brookline residents and officials and presented herself and what her plans were with respect to the DA’s office,” Greene said. “No one else did.”

June 6, 2026

Another candidate, Djuna Perkins, also reached out to the Herald to reissue her similar call from last June. “Michael Morrissey has shown that he is no longer fit to lead the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office,” Perkins wrote in the statement. Residents of Norfolk County, victims of crime, and those in our criminal justice system deserve better. I am calling on DA Morrissey to resign effectively immediately to ensure the restoration of justice and integrity in the District Attorney’s Office.”

January 13, 2026

Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey, a veteran of state politics who came under scrutiny for his office's handling of recent high-profile cases, announced Monday that he will not run for reelection this year.

January 12, 2026

Djuna Perkins, whose legal career includes 10 years serving as an assistant district attorney and assistant attorney general, is also running for DA. “Michael Morrissey’s decision to not seek re-election is the right one,” Perkins said in a statement. “Now, residents of Norfolk County have the opportunity to elect a qualified District Attorney committed to the pursuit of justice — free from bias, conflict, and political entanglements.”

December 4, 2025

ENDORSEMENT ALERT — Ten local officials are endorsing Djuna Perkins for Norfolk County district attorney as she looks to oust Norfolk County DA Michael Morrissey.

On the list: Braintree Town Council members Julia Flaherty and Elizabeth Maglio, Canton Select Board members Patricia Boyden and Sue Harrington, Dedham Select Board member Michelle Persson Reilly, Milton Select Board members Meghan Haggerty and Benjamin Zoll, Randolph Town Councilor Jesse Gordon, Quincy City Councilor-elect Virginia Ryan and Weymouth Town Councilor-elect Rebecca Shangraw.

July 23, 2025

After the first trial ended with a hung jury last summer, Morrissey hired a special prosecutor to lead the charge against Read a second time. The county paid Whitey Bulger’s former defense lawyer Hank Brennan $566,000 to try the case—because top prosecutors in the DA’s office wouldn’t touch it, sources told VF last year. Djuna Perkins, a former assistant district attorney in Suffolk County hoping to unseat Morrissey in the 2026 election, estimates that Morrissey spent about $1 million on the second trial—more than a third of his office’s entire operating budget. (Asked about this claim, Morrissey’s office told VF it did not yet know the total cost of the trial.) In the end, the jury only found Read guilty of operating under the influence of liquor. For that misdemeanor, Read was sentenced to one year probation.

July 13, 2025

A candidate running for Norfolk County District Attorney says she is in full support of the Massachusetts State Police removing Sgt. Yuriy Buhkenik from the office. “I again applaud MA State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble for his leadership in reassigning another officer from the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office,” Dedham resident Djuna Perkins stated in a social media post last week, a day after the development came to light. “As DA, I would have removed Sgt. Yuri Bukhenik on day #1, but now that will not be necessary,” the former assistant attorney general and head of the Suffolk County DA’s domestic violence unit added. “I will eliminate the toxic culture from the office and demand professionalism, integrity, and excellence so every resident of Norfolk County is safe and treated fairly under the law.”

June 20, 2025

A candidate running for Norfolk County District Attorney is calling on Michael Morrissey to resign from the post after a jury acquitted Karen Read of second-degree murder, a charge she says signals an inexperienced prosecutor. Dedham resident Djuna Perkins, a former assistant attorney general and head of the Suffolk County DA’s domestic violence unit, is also speaking out against Morrissey for giving John O’Keefe’s family “false hope about the outcome.” Perkins is seeking to unseat Morrissey after throwing her hat in the political ring for a post that voters will not decide until November 2026.

June 19, 2025

March 20, 2025

Norfolk District Attorney candidate Djuna Perkins issued the following statement in response to the firing of Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor:

“I applaud State Police Colonel Noble for his decision to terminate Trooper Michael Proctor from the MA State Police. Trooper Proctor’s conduct was appalling, especially for someone entrusted with investigating murders and the most heinous crimes in Norfolk County.

September 18, 2024

DEDHAM - Two years before the Democratic primary for Norfolk County district attorney, a veteran former prosecutor from Dedham has thrown her hat in the ring for the county's top law enforcement post.

Djuna Perkins, the past chief of the domestic assault unit for the Suffolk County district attorney's office and a former assistant attorney general, said that she is seeking the post currently occupied by Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey in the September 2026 Democratic primary.

September 17, 2024

Djuna Perkins, a longtime attorney with a history of prosecuting domestic violence & sexual abuse cases, is running for DA in Norfolk County as the office faces criticism for it’s handling of two high-profile cases.

September 17, 2024

A former Suffolk County prosecutor with experience in domestic violence cases announced Tuesday a Democratic bid for Norfolk County district attorney, the heavily scrutinized post responsible for the prosecution of Karen Read and probe into Sandra Birchmore’s death.

September 3, 2024

The DA’s handling of the Read case raised serious questions about his competence and judgment, but it was not the only one. The 2021 hanging death of Sandra Birchmore in Canton was ruled a suicide, but the circumstances were suspicious and warranted further investigation. Birchmore was pregnant and claimed the father was her boyfriend, a married police officer. He denied paternity, but he was the last person to see her alive, and he and two other Stoughton police officers had used Birchmore for sex since she was a teenager. Yet Morrissey failed to take further investigative steps to identify the father of the child or to confirm that the mechanism of injury could not have been homicide.

September 1, 2024

“There were clear markers here of criminal conduct,” said Djuna Perkins, a lawyer who has been tracking the case and previously led the domestic violence unit at the Suffolk district attorney’s office. She said the state’s failure to bring murder charges based on evidence later shared with federal authorities was “very strange,” and suggested the US attorney’s office stepped in “because the DA had done nothing.” “At first you think maybe it’s just incompetence, maybe it’s negligence, sloppiness,” Perkins said. “But this is so much it makes you start to question intentional conduct.”

June 26, 2024

Given the connections between Birchmore and the three former Stoughton police officers she met through the youth program, the lack of testing of the samples as alleged by Baden “does not seem to fit with any standard practices that I am familiar with,” said Djuna Perkins, a former state prosecutor who now practices law in Dedham. “It screams red flag,” Perkins said Wednesday.