WATERVILLE -- The man hired to investigate the April 12 arrests at Colby College is a former trial lawyer who also was district attorney for Suffolk County in Massachusetts from 1992 to 2002.

Ralph Martin II, managing partner of the Boston office of Bingham McCutchen and principal of the Bingham Consulting Group, is investigating the Easter morning arrests of two students as well as the conduct of involved security personnel.

Jacob Roundtree, 21, and Ozzy Ramirez, 22, were restrained by campus security early April 12 in a campus building after a dance. Some students who witnessed the event say that security personnel and police used an excessive amount of force on the students.

Hired at the request of Colby President William D. Adams, Martin made his first visit to the Colby campus Tuesday, said Colby spokesman David T. Eaton.

"The president is handling this personally," Eaton said, "which is a clear indication of the weight he's giving to this matter."

Martin's biography, posted on his company's Web site, notes that Martin practices in corporate investigations, white-collar defense and general civil litigation. Bingham Consulting counsels corporate clients on charting the regulatory, legal and political risks associated with investigations, anti-trust issues, class-action cases and other issues.

In an open letter to the Colby community Friday, Adams said Martin's background "affords him excellent credentials in organizing investigations and assessing facts and evidence. But as a consultant, he also has earned praise from colleagues in areas such as community policing."

Adams has said he wanted an outside investigator to conduct an impartial examination of the April 12 events, which were partly videotaped by two cell-phones.

The video was widely circulated on the Internet.