BOSTON, March 30, 2016—A Brighton man found guilty of larceny was arraigned today on new charges alleging that he returned to the courthouse and tampered with the clerk’s file, altering the jury verdict slip to reflect a “not guilty” verdict and then presenting the doctored slip as genuine, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

DAVID SCHER (D.O.B. 11/22/82) was arraigned today in Suffolk Superior Court on a five-count indictment charging him with perjury, tampering with a court document, forgery, and two counts of uttering a false document. Because he walked into his summons arraignment, Clerk Magistrate Lisa Medeiros released him on his own recognizance and scheduled his trial for Dec. 13.

Assistant District Attorney Greer Spatz of the DA’s Special Prosecutions Unit told the court that Scher had been convicted of larceny from a building following a 2014 jury trial in the Boston Municipal Court. Specifically, jurors convicted him of stealing a laptop from Suffolk University Law School, where he had been a student.

Scher received a sentence of 90 days in a house of correction suspended for two years on the larceny conviction. If convicted of the new perjury case, he would face up to 20 years in state prison.

The verdict slip provided to the jury had two blank spaces, one indicating a guilty verdict and one indicating a not guilty verdict. Following jury deliberations, the jury foreperson checked off the space indicating “guilty.” The trial judge and clerk both personally viewed that slip and the full jury confirmed on the record that their verdict was guilty.

In the weeks and months after Scher’s conviction, Spatz said, Scher returned to the BMC clerk’s office and requested access to the case file, which is a public record, on several occasions. During one of those visits, prosecutors say, Scher removed the verdict slip from the file and forged a copy of it. He allegedly altered that copy to reflect a verdict of not guilty and placed the resulting forgery in the file. The original slip has never been located, prosecutors said, and the forged verdict slip then began to appear in various matters related to Scher’s conviction.

On July 22, 2014, Scher was arraigned in Brighton Municipal Court on charges of operating a motor vehicle without insurance and leaving the scene of an accident causing property damage, triggering a hearing to determine whether he had violated the terms of his suspended sentence on the larceny conviction. Scher’s attorney for that hearing presented the forged jury slip at the hearing in an effort to call the larceny conviction into question.

On Dec. 31, 2014, Scher allegedly filed a complaint with the state’s Department of Criminal Justice Information Services, which oversees arrest and conviction records. In that complaint, signed under the pains and penalties of perjury, Scher allegedly claimed that the verdict at his trial was not guilty and that he had notified the court of the alleged error.

On May 15, 2015, an attorney retained by Scher sent an email to Suffolk University Law School, which had denied Scher a diploma and status in light of the theft and conviction pending a final hearing.

“I am attaching a copy of the verdict form that indicates ‘Not Guilty,’” the attorney wrote in the email, which was accompanied by a scanned copy of the forged slip.

Scher was represented today by attorney Richard Doyle. He will return to court on May 4.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.