Margaret H. Marshall, A. Paul Cellucci's controversial nominee for chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), commissioned an internal investigation which some say mishandled discrimination charges, according to University documents.

As Harvard's General Counsel, Marshall selected her own former law firm to investigate complaints filed by several guards against the University about seven years ago.

Marshall's report found no misconduct on Harvard's part, but in 1997, a jury ruled differently and ordered Harvard to pay over $2 million in compensation to one of the guards. The jury found that the racial discrimination that Viatcheslav Abramian complained of seven years ago led to his dismissal in 1993.

Stephen G. McCombe, president of the Harvard University Guards' Union, said he believed Marshall acted improperly in hiring her own firm to investigate the charges.

"She should've hired someone from an outside firm to do it," said McCombe, who testified for Abramian in the lawsuit. "They didn't really interview everybody that was involved. They kind of stacked it."

"Evidently from the evidence that was prepared, 12 jurors agreed with me," McCombe added.

University officials defended Marshall's conduct, saying she called for a report voluntarily out of a desire to get to the bottom of the issue.

But McCombe said Marshall may have acted because of pressure from a Crimson article outlining the guards' charges.