Michael Sullivan spent greater than 26 years in jail for a homicide he didn’t commit. On Tuesday, a Suffolk County jury awarded him $13 million for his misplaced time and struggling.
Sullivan, initially of Cambridge and now of Lowell, was convicted in 1987 at age 26 for the armed theft of Wilfred McGrath, 52, of East Cambridge.
Sullivan remained in jail till he was granted a contemporary trial in 2013 after a key piece of proof and testimony seemed to be lies. On the 1987 trial, the state crime lab chemist Robert Pino testified that blood was discovered on Sullivan’s clothes. That clothes would later take a look at detrimental for blood and that McGrath, the homicide sufferer, was not a contributor to every other DNA discovered on the clothes.
Superior Court docket Justice Kathe Tuttman vacated Sullivan’s convictions in November 2012 and he was launched on bond the next January.
In response to Sullivan’s attorneys, the Middlesex District Lawyer’s workplace waited a further six years earlier than dropping the costs towards Sullivan in 2019. The legislation agency Heinlein Beeler Mingace & Heineman then took on the case as a civil matter, which led to a three-week civil trial that ended on Tuesday with a verdict granting Sullivan $13 million.
“At this civil trial, Mr. Sullivan bore the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that he was actually innocent of the crimes,” the legislation agency acknowledged in a press launch. “The jury today, in a resounding verdict, declared that Michael had been erroneously convicted in 1987 and had proven by clear and convincing evidence that he was innocent of the crimes.”
The homicide
A little bit after midnight on March 8, 1986, somebody discovered a physique wrapped in a quilt with its ft sure with electrical wire behind an deserted Cease & Store in Somerville, in accordance with the civil grievance within the case. Police would establish the physique as McGrath. A recent account within the Herald described McGrath’s stays as “badly beaten.”
Sullivan’s conviction on that homicide hinged on the false evaluation by Pino’s work on the crime lab, the testimony of the person Sullivan says is the true assassin, and his personal purple down West Wind-brand massive jacket.
Pino, who together with the state was the defendant on this case, had stated that Sullivan’s purple jacket had blood on it. Sullivan frequently appealed to have the proof examined, as he insisted that no blood can be discovered. The Supreme Judicial Court docket upheld the conviction in 1991, so Sullivan’s lawyer tried to take it up in federal court docket in 1996, however that litigation was halted in 2002 to permit for additional state appeals. In 2008, Sullivan’s lawyer filed for a brand new trial, however that was denied with out a listening to.
Lastly, in October 2010, a single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court docket allowed for the purple jacket to be retested at a non-public library with funding from the Committee for Public Counsel Providers Innocence Program, in accordance with SJC data. That testing discovered that there was no blood on the jacket and that McGrath’s DNA was not discovered. The testing led to the brand new trial.
A person named Gary Grace was arrested and charged with the homicide, in accordance with court docket filings, however he denied it and as an alternative pointed to Sullivan and two males named Stephen Angier and Emil Petrla. Prosecutors struck a plea cope with Grace, decreasing his cost to “accessory after the fact” in alternate for his testimony implicating the others.
“Grace’s fabricated and self-serving narrative detailed the brutal beating of McGrath, which involved Sullivan allegedly stomping on McGrath’s head numerous times,” the civil grievance states.
Sullivan’s protection “was based in large part upon the testimony of Petrla, who admitted his own guilt, despite being held for his own trial,” the grievance states. Petrla testified in truth that Grace was the killer and that Sullivan was not current.”
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