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Wrongful Murder Convictions in MassachusettsLast updated: March 22, 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Facing a possible life sentence if convicted at trial, Boston Mafia captain Vincent Ferrara pleaded guilty to federal charges of racketeering, gambling, extortion, and ordering the 1985 murder of Vincent Limoli, and was sentenced to 22 years in prison. But Assistant US Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn did not tell Ferrara's lawyer that key witness Walter Jordan had tried to recant his allegation that Ferrara ordered the slaying. Jordan came forward in 2002 to say that prosecutors and investigators coerced him into sticking to his story. Ferrara's sentence for the murder was overturned and he was released from prison in 2005. Read more
Angel Toro was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Kathleen Downey, desk clerk at the Dorchester Howard Johnson's who was killed during an armed robbery in 1981. In 2004, prosecutors said that they would seek to vacate Toro's conviction after two prosecution witnesses stated that police had pressured them to commit perjury at trial and evidence implicating a different perpetrator was discovered in police files. Read more
Adams was sentenced to the electric chair for the 1972 beating death of transit worker James Corry. That sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when the Supreme Judicial Court invalidated the capital statute. The conviction was called into question when it was discovered that Boston police had withheld evidence and witnesses identifying other individuals and a trial witness recanted her testimony. Prosecutors dropped the murder charges thirty years after he was sentenced to die. Read more
Drumgold was convicted of first-degree murder for the 1988 shooting death of 12-year-old Tiffany Moore and sentenced to life without a parole. Following a Boston Globe investigation which raised doubts about Drumgold's guilt and several prosecution witnesses revealed that their testimony had been coerced by authorities, prosecutors requested that the conviction be overturned. The investigation of Tiffany's murder has been re-opened. Read more
Pasquale Barone was convicted on both state and federal charges for the 1985 gangland murder of Vincent "Jimmy" Limoli. In prison since his arrest in 1998, Barone was freed on October 24, 2003, after US District Judge Mark Wolf found that a federal prosecutor had failed to tell the defense that a key government witness had changed his story just before trial, which Wolf described as "fraudulent." In order to avoid additional time in prison awaiting a retrial, Barone agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter for Limoli's killing and was sentenced to five years. Barone also admitted that he assisted in the murder of Anthony Corlito in 1979, and shot a guard during the robbery of a credit union in 1982. Read more
In order to protect Mafia informants Joseph Barboza and Vincent Flemmi, corrupt FBI agents Paul Rico and Dennis Condon encouraged perjured testimony from Barboza against six men for the 1965 murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan. Found guilty and sentenced to death were Peter Limone, Louis Greco, Henry Tameleo and Ronald Cassesso. Sentenced to life were Joseph Salvati and Wilfred Roy French. While Cassesso and French had participated in the murder along with Barboza and Flemmi, Greco, Limone, Salvati and Tameleo had not, and were identified by Barboza in order to settle old grudges. After four years on death row, the four death sentences were converted to life sentences. Salvati won a commutation of his sentence and was paroled in 1997. Limone's and Salvati's sentences were overturned and Limone was released in 2001 when secret FBI documents were uncovered by a Justice Department task force. Tameleo had died in prison in 1985. Greco had died in prison in 1995. Factually guilty but nonetheless convicted on perjured testimony, French was released from prison in 2001, but Cassesso had died in prison. Read more
Waters was convicted of murder and robbery and sentenced to life in prison for the slaying of Katharina Brow. After 18 years of investigation, Waters' sister uncovered blood evidence. DNA testing indicated that he was not involved. With no opposition from prosecutors, the sentence was vacated. Read more
Passley was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Tennyson Drakes and wounding two of Drakes' friends, both of whom identified Passley as the shooter. A total of four eye witnesses testified at trial that Passley was the gunman, while nine others testified that he was elsewhere at the time. The conviction, upheld on appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court, resulted in a sentence of life without possibility of parole, The District Attorney asked that Passley's conviction be vacated after new evidence came to light. The conviction was overturned in 2000. Read more
Johnson spent more than five years in prison for the murder of 9-year-old Jermaine Goffigan before an unrelated federal drug investigation unexpectedly uncovered testimony that led to Johnson's full exoneration and release. Johnson's conviction had been based on mistaken eye-witness testimony. Read more Christina Hill - convicted: 1990
Social worker Colleen Maxwell was shot and killed during a robbery in 1983. Santos was convicted in 1985 on very weak identification based almost entirely on race. He had served three years of a life prison term when the Supreme Judicial Court in 1988 threw out his conviction. A jury acquitted Santos upon retrial in 1990. Read more
Leaster was convicted of the murder of Roxbury merchant Levi Whiteside and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1977, two attorneys working pro bono uncovered a new witness who had seen two men, neither of whom was Leaster, fleeing the scene of the crime. It was shown that the conviction was based on erroneous eyewitness identification. The murder weapon was also shown to have been used in a crime two weeks after Leaster's arrest. After 15 years in prison, the charges were dismissed. Read more
Frank Grace, New Bedford political activist and Black Panther Party member, was convicted along with his brother Ross Grace of the 1972 murder of Marvin Morgan and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Recanted testimony by an eyewitness who had apparently been coached by New Bedford police led to an evidentiary hearing in 1984, where Ross Grace acknowledged sole responsibility for the murder. Read more
Johnson was convicted of the murder of James Christian and sentenced to death. His conviction was overturned in 1974 and a second jury convicted him of second-degree murder with a sentence of life imprisonment, which was confirmed on appeal. Both the murder victim and all the members of both juries were white. In 1982, a reluctant witness identified the true killer: the prosecution's key witness against Johnson. Read more
A 1966 payroll heist at Boston's South Station led to the shooting death of railway clerk Michael Shaw. Prosecutors sought the death penalty against "Silky" Sullivan, who had been identified by witnesses, and Reissfelder, who had virtually no evidence against him. By the time of the trial, police knew that Reissfelder was not Sullivan's accomplice but did not want to say so because that revelation could jeopardize the prosecution of Sullivan. Both were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Several years later, attorneys were able to find reluctant alibi witnesses for Reissfelder, a Boston police officer who had learned of the fraudulent prosecution, as well as deathbed testimony from Sullivan clearing Reissfelder. Read more Christian Amado - convicted: 1980
In 1973, Boston Police Detective John Schroeder was murdered in the commission of a robbery. The three youths who committed the crime were apprehended within a day. In the course of plea-bargaining, two of the defendants agreed to testify against an accomplice named "Sue." Ella Mae Ellison was eventually arrested as being "Sue." While she knew the defendants, the only evidence against her was their testimony. As part of their agreement with prosecutors, the two plead guilty to second-degree murder. Ellison was convicted of first-degree murder and armed robbery and sentenced to two life terms. In 1976, the two defendants who had testified against Ellison admitted that there had been no fourth participant in the crime; they had invented "Sue." The Supreme Judicial Court subsequently reversed Ellison's conviction and all charges were dropped. Read more Santos Rodriguez - convicted: 1954 Gangi Cero - convicted: 1927
On the afternoon of April 15, 1920, Frederick Parmenter, paymaster for the Slater and Morrill Shoe Factories, and his guard, Alessandro Beradelli, were killed by two gunmen who escaped with the shoe company's payroll. In Massachusetts' most infamous criminal trial, two Italian immigrants and self-professed anarchists were convicted of the double homicide. The question of their factual guilt remains open. What is certain is the biased and bigoted nature of their trial. In 1977, Governor Michael Dukakis, following exhaustive examination of the record, pronounced that the trial was riddled with error, including willful use of misleading evidence, refusal to investigate exculpatory evidence, and flagrant appeals to ethnic and political prejudice. Read more
Tucker was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, based on circumstantial evidence. The conviction was affirmed on appeal. More than 100,000 Massachusetts residents signed petitions requesting clemency when a trial witness confessed to perjury. Read more Dominic Daley and James Halligan - convicted: 1806 Since the resumption of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, over 100 people have been released from death row, often after several years of incarceration, and in some cases, having come within hours of execution. In addition, several people have been executed despite serious and persistent questions of factual innocence. Unfortunately, our criminal justice system is not equipped to formally acknowledge such errors. In 1996, the federal Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act put limits on the right of habeas corpus for death row inmates in order to shorten the length of time between conviction and execution. |
