00:00:02
Speaker 1: Just after four am on November sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine, in front of a Boston housing project, some neighbors heard a commotion and saw a group of three men from a distance, rob and Batley shoot a cab driver. Another cab driver came forward and claimed to have witnessed the very moment when the assailants first hailed the cab in downtown Boston, and after hypnosis, the caby identified sixteen year old Fred Clay and twenty year old James Watson as two of the three assailants. Then the witnesses from the scene agreed, resulting in the two young men being sent away for life. This is wrongful conviction. You're listening to wrongful conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Ronfuel Conviction. We're going to go back to Boston for the nineteen seventy nine robbery and murder of a taxi driver when both public and private pressure produced some very dubious witnesses, and two young men were sacrificed to alleviate that pressure. Let's call it what it is. We originally covered this story back in twenty nineteen with Fred Clay, the co defendant of our guest today, mister James Watson. James, thanks for joining us. Yes, a new problem, and with him is his appellate attorney, Barb Monroe. Barb, thanks for doing this.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me now, James.

00:01:40
Speaker 1: You grew up in Boston, right.

00:01:42
Speaker 3: I've been to Boston all my life, born and raised with my mother and two brothers and two sisters. My father he did not stay with us, but there was another man that dead live with us, which is my baby.

00:01:53
Speaker 4: Sister's father, Joe.

00:01:55
Speaker 3: And he drank a lot and he picked frice at my mother and one day he slapped my mother in the mouth. And I had to be around nine to ten. I lost it and I went in the kitchen and I got every can I can possibly get out the cabinet and used it to throw metal and I lost the fight.

00:02:17
Speaker 4: But he had bruises.

00:02:18
Speaker 3: He had bruises, so we moved from bluehoo Ave to Orchard Pop to get away from him, and he found us and the guy came. He came in and knocked on the door. I ain't see him in a long time, so I actually he really didn't recognize him. But he knocked on the door and my mother opened the door, and I heard her say, how did you find me? And he said, I want to see my daughter, and my mother said, you don't supposed to be here. That's when I realized that's Joe, that's the basket.

00:02:48
Speaker 4: You know.

00:02:49
Speaker 3: I'm much older now, you know, I was about fifteen sixteen, and I've told my buddy, I said, let's kick his ass, you know what I mean, Let's whoop his ass. But my sister, she was young. She said, I want to see my daddy. So that's what stopped me from in his ass.

00:03:05
Speaker 1: The family moved again, this time to the Archdale Housing Projects in Roslindale, and over the next few years, James's photo ended up in the system for a petty theft, and he also met his son's mother, Diane Moses.

00:03:18
Speaker 4: I met Diane in nineteen seventy seven.

00:03:23
Speaker 3: It was only together for like two years before all this happened. She had two kids already, you boy and a girl, and then she got pregnant with my son, Don Juan Moses. He was thirteen months at the time before this crime happened. I was on top of the world when he was born. I was so full of joy it happiness to have a son. Everybody loved him, especially the women. The girl loved him.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: And this brings us to the faithful night of November sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine, just a little after four am, when a twenty eight year old cab driver named Jeffrey Boyegian was dropping off of fair at the Archdale Housing projects and twenty five year old neighbor Neil Sweat described what he saw from his window.

00:04:08
Speaker 2: A cab shows up and it's dark. It's about at least eighty feet from where the cab is to where this young man is looking out the window, and he sees a cab driver getting pulled out of the cab. And he sees three black men. Two is tall, one was small, and then he sees the shorter one shoot the cab driver five times and then they took off. He had called another person who was there to go to work with him to come look out the window as well.

00:04:36
Speaker 1: And the other young man was named Ben Brown.

00:04:38
Speaker 3: Ben Brown he used to pick Sweat up to go to work because Sweat couldn't read the size on the bus, and they get on the bus together and ride up to Rossendale Square. The whole family couldn't read it right. The mother couldn't read it right.

00:04:50
Speaker 2: This young man who witnessed this had some severe intellectual disabilities. And his mother was also there, and she looked out and she saw whatever she saw, and she also had severe intellectual disabilities as well.

00:05:04
Speaker 1: And the mother's name was Philippa Sweat, and being eighty feet away with the aid of only one street light, the Sweats were only confident that the assailants wore leather jackets. The two were tall and one was small, but they weren't confident in their ability to identify them. Meanwhile, the police continued their canvas.

00:05:24
Speaker 3: I was home sleep and the detectives came and knocked on my door, and yes, did I hear anything or did I see anything? I said, No, I was four in the morning. No, I was in latter Land.

00:05:37
Speaker 4: I was sleeping. I did not hear anything.

00:05:40
Speaker 1: James had a thirteen month old son, so it's more likely that he'd be getting every minute of sleep that he could rather than staying out till four am and committing a robbery and murder. With two other guys, one of whom bred Clay. He only knew through his would be mother in law.

00:05:55
Speaker 3: His mother used to hang out with Diane's mother, and that's how I knew Freddy.

00:05:59
Speaker 4: I never hung out with this kid. He wasn't even sixteen.

00:06:02
Speaker 1: Plus Freddie lived at a foster home, not at the projects, and perhaps both of their relationships with the system played into how they were singled out. When another cab driver named Richard Dwyer came forward that Friday morning with a story which started out with some naked racism.

00:06:18
Speaker 2: Supposedly, this cab driver saw three black men in the red light district down on Washington Street. He put his meter on to look that he was busy, So the three black men get into a cab. In the cab left, and then the next day is when the cab driver allegedly sees a picture in the paper of the cab that Jeffrey had been driving, and he remembers the cab as the one he saw these three black men get into.

00:06:45
Speaker 1: But this shooting happened around four a m. And that morning's newspaper had already been printed. So no, mister Dwyer, you didn't recognize the licensed number of Jeffrey Boyagian's cab in the newspaper. You couldn't have and it's possible that Dwyer, well, he could have been motivated by some understandable fear among cab drivers and their business interests.

00:07:05
Speaker 2: The day that James was arrested, there was an article in the paper as well about the cab drivers being upset that there was not enough done about the shooting and there's been a lot of shootings and they were saying if it was a police getting shot, they'd be doing something. So there was a lot of pressure on the police to get this taken care of as well.

00:07:25
Speaker 1: So now, as an alleged eyewitness, Dwyer met with Boston Police officer Patrick Brady, who had taken a number of hypnotism courses, and at some point Dwyer was also shown some photo arrays.

00:07:36
Speaker 2: They hypnotize him and they tell him that it's like a video recording, so he can stop the frame when he sees the men who were getting into the cab, and the particular man that he focused in on was allegedly James, because he was the polite gentleman letting the other two in the cab at least he was polite and he could describe him, and he described allegedly Fred as well. Couldn't really describe the third person.

00:08:00
Speaker 1: And I think anyone with a human brain can recognize that their memories do not work like an on demand video streaming service with zoom capabilities. But there's even more. The order of photo viewing and hypnotism is also very important.

00:08:15
Speaker 2: This was going to be a case of first impression whether hypnotic identifications would be admissible in Massachusetts. So they knew that if the testimony came out that he had looked at the photographs after he was hypnotized, it would be an admissible What they said happened was that he was shown photographs of I think it was sixteen random black men from the projects, and he chose James and Fred. Now allegedly they said this happened before he was hypnotized. The reality that we find out when we did our investigation was that did not happen that way. So they had the change in narrative that he made the identification untainted by any hypnosis. So the hypnotism in itself is junk science. But the fact that the prosecutor, we believe lied and we have found evidence in the DA files that showed that he did. It's pretty problematic.

00:09:11
Speaker 1: Perhaps the prospect of using hypnotic identifications going forward was just too alluring. Luckily for all of us, the president was not established. However, The doctor narrative was that Dwyer made a tentative idea of James and Fred from sixteen photos of local black men before being hypnotized and then making a confident identification of both, which also raises the specter of solidifying a false memory. Either way, the police sought support for this dubious ID process.

00:09:40
Speaker 3: They have took Diane down to the police station that Friday of the crime. I didn't know that, and she never told me that. They pulled her over and took it down to the station. I had to find out down the road. They threatened to give us seven years and frame him, take her kids from him, and cut her off public aid. If you try to give your boyfriend a fucking alibi, That's what he told me.

00:10:01
Speaker 1: Despite Diane naming alternate suspects who were known for similar crimes and had been wearing leather jackets, she was being coerced into implicating James. But at this time she hadn't yet committed to helping the police.

00:10:14
Speaker 3: So after that they had me down the station Saturday Sunday. You know, I'm telling them I wasn't there. I didn't do this. I got a kid man, I did not rob no cab driver. I was not downtown four o'clock in the morning to take a burlow. He said, are you willing to take a polygraph test? I said, listen, man, I'll take a polygraph test, drug syrup, whatever you want me to do that make you understand that I'm telling you the truth.

00:10:40
Speaker 4: I didn't do this. I wouldn't do this.

00:10:42
Speaker 3: And he said, okay, we'll do the polygraph one o'clock Monday, so he let me leave.

00:10:48
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, they had been talking to philipp and Neil Sweat.

00:10:51
Speaker 2: They start interviewing the Sweats and showing them photographs and this went on over the course of the entire weekend. Well come to find out that the Sweats wanted to move out of the projects for a long time because they were one of the few white families living there and they wanted to move to the white projects. So finally, by Monday, they convinced mister Sweat that he could identify mister Watson and mister Clay and he did. Fred was the gunman and James was just there to assist and the third person who knows, And they moved them.

00:11:27
Speaker 1: And they tried to use hypnosis with Neil Sweat as well.

00:11:30
Speaker 2: They did, but because of his intellectual disabilities his concentration, it didn't go so well.

00:11:36
Speaker 1: At this time, Philippus Wett was not willing to join her son in making an ID. Meanwhile, James still thought a polygraph would prove his innocence, but Detective Burlow didn't come to get him until late Monday evening, without his partner, but rather some mystery man who left. When they arrived at the precinct and James was brought inside.

00:11:54
Speaker 3: I'm sitting in the office and it's just me, Detective Burlow and Detective Paul Carroll.

00:12:00
Speaker 4: He said, what would wrong man? You know what I mean? Why did you kill him? This is supposed to be for a parograph. I didn't do this.

00:12:06
Speaker 3: And then he said you've been identified. I said what he said, you've been identified.

00:12:11
Speaker 4: So get the fuck out of here. I said, who identified me? Who let me see him?

00:12:15
Speaker 3: Who?

00:12:16
Speaker 1: You know?

00:12:16
Speaker 4: You've been identified?

00:12:17
Speaker 3: And you being book for murder booked me, fingerprint me, took me to Child Street jail and that's where I remained for twenty three months.

00:12:38
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00:13:25
Speaker 3: Freddie they made him my coat defended, which I didn't know of. I happened to be in Childbree playing cards. He came to hild freet and I said, damn, Freddie, what they get you for? Oh, I'm in here for the same thing you are. I said what, Yeah, they said, I shot the gun.

00:13:39
Speaker 4: I said, oh shit. Later on they came and they pulled him out.

00:13:42
Speaker 3: Of child speat, and then the lawyer came up. He said, look, they don't want you right, they want Freddy. You know me, They want to shoot it if you testify against Freddie. The DA said he'd give you time serve and cut your loose. But all you have to do was testified against Frederick Clay.

00:14:02
Speaker 1: Who was a sixteen year old child at that time.

00:14:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, was a baby, he was a kid. He was locked up in a Foster home under lock and key. The woman name was Missus Kings. He was living in the Foster home. Well, the only way you can get out the house is use a key to open the door from the inside.

00:14:17
Speaker 1: And if you'd like to hear Fred's side of this story, and I hope you will, we're gonna link his interview in the episode of description. So anyway, neither of them took a deal. Oddly, they didn't apply more pressure on James, considering the options time served or death.

00:14:33
Speaker 3: I didn't know about the death penalty stat too until I went for my arraignment and Timothy o'dneill, I'll never forget that, bastard. He asked, Judge Irwin, I can never forget that as long as as I live. He said, I like to indict mister Watson under the death penalty status here on due to the nature of the crime and the underlining felony the robbery. And Judge Irwin put his glasses down over his big fucking nose and said, granted, I said death finality. What now, I'm scared. I'm sure you know. I mean, I'm growing gray heads at a very early age.

00:15:06
Speaker 2: Ten months. Ten months he sat in jail knowing that he was facing the death penalty until they took it to court, and then with a case that bears his name and three others, they found that the death penalty is unconstitutional.

00:15:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those cases that abolished the death penalty in Massachusetts. But not knowing this outcome, James still didn't waiver. It's amazing. Unfortunately, Diane Moses had her children to think of, so she agreed to help the police.

00:15:37
Speaker 3: I found that out when I'm sitting in child Street. And then Frank Color, her trinity, came up, said Diane, your girlfriend Moses is going to testify against you, saying that you told her you was there, but you didn't do the shoot. I said, what, I never told her that.

00:15:54
Speaker 4: Well, that's what she's going to testify to.

00:15:56
Speaker 3: And if you want to mean change, I ain't changing shit. I did not do this. I did not kill nobody. I would never kill nobody or let nobody be killed. But anyway I had to find out down the road they threatened her. I'm saying, wow, they must already did a job on her. So I'm missing my son, and I told my sister. I said, joint, go down over there, get my son and bring him up here to visit me. So she goes down to the apartment. The apartment is empty. They took her and moved the down south you mean like South Boston, Georgia, Georgia. And that's where she stayed until trial. Now, even though Fred was the alleged shooter, both Fred and James were charged with first degree murder, which later became an issue that won James a new trial, but either way, the first trial proceeded in August of nineteen eighty one.

00:16:42
Speaker 2: Fred and James were tried together and there was no physical evidence, and Nil Sweat identified them with his magical powers of sight, and Richard Dwyer came in and identified both of them, and so he had everyone believing that they had made this initial identification free of hypnotism.

00:17:02
Speaker 1: And then he spoke about how his hypnotism session was like watching a movie of the assailants getting into Jeffrey Boyegian's cab.

00:17:10
Speaker 3: Yes, he said, it was like being at the movie, you know, I mean, he can picture it clearly that Yes, this is the guy saw he said. We walked there at New across the street. I opened the door, let the other two get in, and then I walked around, looked him in the face, and then got into the cop and the cab drove off.

00:17:31
Speaker 1: Then Boston Police Officer Patrick Brady was sworn in as an expert investigative hypnologist. Okay, and he testified that the mind can take mental pictures that are encoded in the brain. I'm pausing here because I'm losing my shit, okay, deep breath. Then the state also presented an LAPD psychologist, a guy named Martin Riser, who testified the the mind works like a giant computerized videotape recording. I mean, fuck off with this shit. And anyway, the defense presented their own expert, a doctor named Martin Orn who said that this tape recorder theory of human memory has no scientific support, because of course it doesn't. And then the state called Ben Brown.

00:18:19
Speaker 4: Ben Brown didn't testify against me.

00:18:21
Speaker 2: He testified at the first trial, and he was technically an adverse witness for the Commonwealth. He did say he saw two people pull the cab driver out, but he didn't recognize the shooter, and he testified that it was not James, that he didn't see him out there.

00:18:36
Speaker 1: So Fred and James both testified in their own defense, saying that they'd had nothing to do with this shooting. But then Diane Moses took the stand.

00:18:45
Speaker 3: She said, I told her that I was dead and that he didn't do the shooting, and she said this, He said, we are not going to tell the police anything else. I said, we, Who the hell are you talking about?

00:18:57
Speaker 1: We?

00:18:57
Speaker 4: She was implicating herself.

00:18:59
Speaker 3: That's how scared she was, you know, because to find out, they kept irrastioning every time they saw her.

00:19:03
Speaker 1: So the trial wrapped up with two alleged eyewitness ideas opposing expert testimonial hypnosis, followed by Diane Moses with this alleged confession.

00:19:15
Speaker 3: They came back with a question that Jermy said, Judge, can you define first degree murder? Judge says, you read the evidence, you got the record going back and into the right with it, so he wouldn't answer their question. And they went back there and came back guilty, guilty of first green murder, and the judge sent you to your natural life and state better tentiaries.

00:19:35
Speaker 4: That was it.

00:19:52
Speaker 3: That's like from the guilty they should be back to child Street because they didn't have the room in Wallpole. The bids were full, so I stayed into child Street and after the next night they shipped me off the Wallpole about six thirty at night, and I ended up steeping in the dayroom on a cot. The cot had to be about four feet five feet and I'm six six. And the next day you went out, got up, stand up for count, and get up the win for breakfast. And when I went to the child hall, a lot of people recognize me because some of the guys in there were older guys, which you call o gez. You know knew my dad, if someone knew my uncle. They schooled me on what was going down. You know, I mean, you have any problems, you let us know. Don't hang with that group. Don't sit at that table. You know, you get the don't cut sit you know, sit with us.

00:20:38
Speaker 4: It was crazy. I was only weighing one hundred and seventy pounds. I was scared to death. Ain't gonna bullshit you. You know what I mean?

00:20:44
Speaker 3: You know, because I heard all the rumors about Walpole, you know, finding bodies two days later and they was raping guys, and you know what I mean, said, damn man, I got to get through this. I didn't know if I won't get through to that. I wasn't contemplating on killing myself, but I said, I'm gonna have to learn how to be a fighting motherfucker and fight.

00:21:04
Speaker 1: He did, and we don't see this often, but he actually won on direct appeal way back in March nineteen eighty three. Now, the jury should have been instructed that James could be found guilty of bellony murder based on robbery only if there was proof that he knew Fred had a gun, But obviously this is only a technical issue. Bred never had a gun and didn't commit this murder, which is where it all becomes like some weird Kafka nightmare. But this is how they were able to Win James in new trial, which began in January nineteen eighty four. Now the hypnosis evidence was not included. It was excluded, but the state added philipp A Sweat as a witness who up until this point, well, she had never made an id.

00:21:47
Speaker 3: When Philip pu Sweat got on a stand and it was asked, do you see the defendant that you saw on November sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine outside your window, Robin his cab driver? And she said well, and the DA got so frustrated he said, I'm gonna ask you again, missus Sweat, now remind you each time he said this To her right, he walked from the witness stand around the table and went directly and stood behind my chair and asked her the question again, do you see the defendant in this courtroom that was participating in the murder and Robbie? And she said well, and he didn't even let her finish. Do you see the defendant that you saw on the women the next sixteenth? Well, to say, to tell you the truth, it was dark to say that it was him. And then I said, damn, look like I might be going home, you know what I mean. But he stood behind my chair, and I looked at my lawyer. I said, like, I'm saying to here, like, motherfucker, you going to say something because he's directed this, it's right to me.

00:22:48
Speaker 4: And she said it was it was kind of dark.

00:22:50
Speaker 3: I'm saying, yeah, okay, And then finally she says, I think that's him right there.

00:22:56
Speaker 4: I said, ain't this after all that? You know what I mean? Come on and no, But he said nothing. My lloyds say nothing.

00:23:01
Speaker 3: Then he foind he's standing around and said, drawn, he's directing the witness to the defendant.

00:23:06
Speaker 4: You know, stop. I said, man, it's kind of late for that.

00:23:08
Speaker 1: Now.

00:23:10
Speaker 2: James's attorney set up the jury thinking that Philippus Sweat is going to get up on that stand and say to you, she can't identify who if it was him. And then she gets up on the stand and says, yeah, that was him. So that kind of sealed the deal. I mean, there was enough there already anyways, but that sealed the deal.

00:23:27
Speaker 3: It was too much fabricated evidence to a lank jeror they know nothing of Mistaken identifications. Eyewitness identification is the worst identification, especially a black man identifying a white person or a white person dientif for the black person that identifications could be totally whaite.

00:23:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, cross racial identification has been proven to be less accurate than guessing, and not even to mention that they were being incentivized eighteen ways till Sunday, which gave them a lot of very good reasons to lie. Nevertheless, he was convicted again and then denied a direct appeal, and because they weren't aware of many of the issues that we know about now, they had effectively just given up and submitted to life without the possibility of parole.

00:24:12
Speaker 3: I've never been in a situation like the Holocaust or anything like that, but I mean, I'd just seen you know, documentaries on that, and that's what it's felt like. You know, you wait to die, stay here, getting that hole and stayed it until.

00:24:25
Speaker 4: You die, you know what I mean. Isn't humane, you know what I mean?

00:24:30
Speaker 1: And eventually a series of Supreme Court decisions began to recognize that, at least for juveniles, first ruling in two thousand and five that the death penalty was a violation of the Eighth Amendments banned on cruel and unusual punishment for juveniles, then the same for juvenile life without parole for non homicide offenses in twenty ten, followed by an extension to homicide cases in twenty twelve, and then those decisions were ruled retroactive in twenty sixteen. So Fred, who was only sixteen when this crime occurred, found support from both Jeffrey Harris, who is private counsel, as well as Lisa Kavanaugh, the director of the Committee for Public Services Council Innocence Program, and they worked on his parole package as well as a motion for a new trial based on actual innocence.

00:25:14
Speaker 2: Lisa Kavanaugh Jeff Harris took on Fred's case and there was a different attorney appointed for James. They really dug down deep into it and found all the stuff on the third party culprits of who probably did do the shooting but has never been held accountable.

00:25:29
Speaker 1: Now, there were police reports that implicated two young men from the projects, Tyrone and Junior Cooper, who were known to wear leather jackets, and Tyrone was short matching the description. But more importantly, according to Diane Moses's initial interview, a man named Jimmy Poole had implicated the Cooper brothers as well. But it looks like since the police already had Dwyer identifying Fred and James, they were not interested in the Cooper's Nonetheless, trial council should have raised this material issue and therefore they were ineffective.

00:25:58
Speaker 2: They actually got Fred released in August of twenty seventeen. His motion for new trial was allowed, I think a week before they were going to release him on parole. James did not get involved with that motion for new trial. I was not involved yet, so he stayed behind in prison. Then I took over his case in May of twenty eighteen. Really credit to Lisa and Jeff because they did more than half of the work for me because they had already done Fred's case. And then we had the best investigator in the world, John Nor Deez.

00:26:30
Speaker 1: And the investigator was able to get confirmation about Diane Moses and her motivation to bear false witness by speaking with her daughter Charrell Moses.

00:26:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sorelle. How it came to me, was her daughter acid you know in mind? Did Jimmy do that? And she said no, I told him that because they was going to take you away from me, take my kids from me. So she said it was either my kids or him.

00:26:53
Speaker 4: I gave them him.

00:26:54
Speaker 1: And that's not all John NARDIZI uncovered.

00:26:56
Speaker 2: When we did our investigation, we found a letter that the DA at the time, Tim O'Neil, had written to a hypnosis expert because he wanted to hire him to testify at the trial, and he laid out how it went, and what he said in the letter was that he was hypnotized and then he was shown photographs. But at trial he kept presenting it as he made an identification, but free of hypnotism. Then he was hypnotized, then he made a second identification, which is why in the second letter we found, the expert said, I can't really help you because it's not going to be admissible because it's tainted. So that was never turned over to the defense, even though the defense knew. Both defense knew how the actual identification process went down, but they could never prove it. If they had this letter from the expert and the letter he wrote to the expert, it would have been very clear.

00:27:48
Speaker 1: So this is the proof of the false narrative, and had they been able to prove it back at trial, Richard Dwyer's ID would not have been admitted. But the investigator uncovered still more even more about Dwyer.

00:28:01
Speaker 3: The cab company that he worked for was owned by an individual named James Quinn. He's a millionaire, and the cab drivers that were working for James Quinn were afraid that they wasn't getting protection from stuff like this, so him and James Quinn got together and cocked up the story. And I also forgot to tell you that when Burlo took me down to the station right that Monday night, the other guy that was with him, I found out was the owner of the cab company, James Quinn. But we went to trial, I seen him again. I said, damn, this motherfucker was in the car with me when I went down to the station.

00:28:40
Speaker 1: So it appears that the police and Dwyer may have been acting at the behest of this wealthy cab company owner to close this case in order to reassure his workers so he could keep the money rolling in. Meanwhile, the Cooper brothers were free to commit similar crimes, including one confirmed arm or so with the alternate suspect evidence Charrell moses to hypnotism correspondence, they were able to file a motion for new trial based on ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial misconduct.

00:29:13
Speaker 2: We had the best co counsel in the world, Madeleine Blanchet and Rada not A Rajan from the New England Innocence Project helped us with the investigation, so we had a great team. Without John and Maddie and Rada and Lisa and Jeff, I don't know what would happen to James. And the reality is that once we found that evidence, COVID hit in March of twenty twenty. So now we have worked on the motion from the trial. Maddie, my co counsel, took over and did the motion to stay and it was new territory to try to get somebody out convicted a first degree murdered not once but twice. But she wrote a brilliant motion to stay. And one of the reasons we were granted the stay was because the Commonwealth admitted that we had a colorable claim because of the withheld evidence between the expert and the DA, so they admitted there was a very real chance of winning on that issue and the judge found it as well, so that gave us a lot of hope that it would have a good result in the end. And before I even filed my full motion for a new trial. We got him released in April April sixteenth, twenty twenty, he walked out the door.

00:30:22
Speaker 1: James was on supervised release while the state conducted their own investigation, and finally, after more than forty one long years, James was reunited with his son, Don Juan Moses, who was just thirteen months old when James was arrested.

00:30:36
Speaker 4: He lives at May, He does hospice. He loves Karen for the elder. He's full of love, he's full of the passion. So he's just like his dad. I know he's mine. I know he's mine always.

00:30:46
Speaker 3: Karen and I got two grandchildren, kim Monie Jerome Moses and Olivia Olivia Rose Moses. It's amazing, you know me. I'm just everytime ope my eyes. I think Barbara Eyti ope my eyes because I can mys and actually look at the sky and not a sell I can walk where I want to walk, say what I want to say, go where I want to go, no restraints. And I really didn't really appreciate freedom until i'd actually lost it, And now that I got it back, I appreciated more than you can imagine.

00:31:21
Speaker 1: And his release and Eventually, his claim of innocence got support from an unexpected source.

00:31:26
Speaker 2: One of the main reasons he got out on the stay is because of the victim's family. The Boegians Jerry and Katrina wrote a letter to the district attorney and agreed that James should be released. And you don't see that often. They are extraordinary people, Yes they are, but that time they didn't really have the full information. So I think it was probably in the back of their mind that first of all, Fred was released, so they knew that one man had been wrongfully convicted. Now here comes the second man who was also wrongfully convicted. But they said because of his health issues and until this was decided, it was the humane thing to do, and there's not a lot of people that would say that. They to this day now do believe that he is innocent, and they have become quite close with James and Linda.

00:32:14
Speaker 1: Linda is James's fiance.

00:32:16
Speaker 3: Matter of fact, I talked to Jerry and Katrina yesterday. We want to drive out there and go out to dinner. I didn't meet them until it was at an Innocent conference, and that's the first time I actually seen him in the flesh. It brew me away because they apologized to me what happened to me. I was like, you don't have to apologize to me. I'm so happy, it's so glad to meet you, and I'm so sorry what happened to your brother. And we gave each other a hug and I told him that the government owes us an apology. They victimized us, Me, Freddie, your family, and your brother, they victimized us. They welcomed me into their home. And it was strange because I'm saying here, I am sitting in this man's home, the brother of the man that was murdered, and telling me that I believe you are innocent. I was speechless. Jerry and Katrina is part of my family now, like Barbara Monroe, angel is what I call it that. Yeah, we're family for life.

00:33:17
Speaker 1: Well that's beautiful, and there's still more good news after that.

00:33:21
Speaker 2: I finished filing up the actual motion for new trial in June twenty twenty, and then it was up to the Conviction Integrity Unit to do their investigation and whether they would assent to the motion, which took until November tenth. So now it was up to the judge to allow the motion. So we had assumed that James would have his day in court. We bought him a freedom suit. Nice custom tailor made Freedom suit for him to wear to court. And it was November tenth and I was having my coffee and looking at the docket and I see motion allowed. I was like, what nobody called us? Nobody told us. I read it on the docket. I was stunned. I mean I was ecstatic, but I was stunned. So he never got to go to court. We didn't tell him, and we arranged an impromptu celebration, and.

00:34:11
Speaker 1: They created some reason for him to try on the suit, that he needed to buy a new button down shirt to go with the suit.

00:34:18
Speaker 3: It was me and my son and John, my investigator, and we was out looking for a shirt. We drove back to the house and everybody was there. My family was there, Barbara, my nieces and nephews that weren't born. When I went in and handle nieces and nephews his night, welcome home.

00:34:38
Speaker 4: It was amazing.

00:34:39
Speaker 1: And since he's been home, he's dedicated to time to building a nonprofit called Confronting Injustice.

00:34:45
Speaker 3: Yes, me and my fiancee, Linda Solomon formed this organization called confronted injustice, supporting wrongfully convicted and others adversely impacted by this judicial system. We have a YouTube channel and we do a podcast Asking here at the House, and we're into you guys, And what we deal with is post incarceration syndrome. People who are locked up coming out of prison. Their mind has been reprogrammed, so to speak. You being in prison ten fifteen years, being told win, eat shit and sleep for decades. That gets embedded in your mind. And do you really stop believing you can't do nothing else but what somebody else tells you to do. People don't know how serious it is. It's really serious. I mean then they come out here and try to function. Like my buddy Freddie, he win it as a baby. He was stopped at sixteen. So we work with guys and women. We go to court, we go and support them. We write letters to the parole board. And guys that have come out, we come out. They don't have nothing, no ID, and you need a mass ID when you get apartment or roof over your head and food to eat.

00:35:49
Speaker 4: So we support them.

00:35:51
Speaker 1: If you want to check out the YouTube channel, it's hosted on YouTube for BCMTV, a nonprofit media company out of Braintree, Massachusetts. We're going to have it linked in the episode description along with the New England in It's It's project a great organization and getting involved with organizations like this one goes a long way to making sure innocent men like James, as well as innocent women across the country have their freedom restored. And with that, we're going to go to closing arguments. This is where I think you, Barb and of course James, from the bottom of my heart, and I'm now going to turn off my microphone, just close my eyes and listen to anything else you have to share. Barb, you go first, and then just hand the mic off to James and he'll take us off into the sunset.

00:36:35
Speaker 2: When these men, usually men, but women as well, come out of prison, sometimes most of the time, they don't even get an apology, which they should, but they certainly don't get compensation they walk out that door. I don't know what they get. What I think you got fifty dollars, James, and then they took some money out because you owed money on your canteen. And they're just left to their own to figure it out. After they've been incarcerated. James was in almost forty two years, and thankfully he had family there to help him, and he had us as well, but not everyone has that, and there's no compensation. They're trying to get compensation for people immediately when they get out, but even what they get now through this state, if you are quote unquote actually innocent, which nobody ever is. According to them, the most that somebody can get. The most that James could have gotten was a million dollars for forty two years in prison. Figure out the math. That's abominable. And then if you decide to do a claim against the city, there's prosecutorial immunity, so that's a problem in itself. But then they're forced to go and wait and wait to try to get compensation. The city of Boston has deep pockets. They can outwait somebody. James doesn't have time to wait for that money. So what does he have to end up doing at some point in time settle for less than he should be getting, and there's no amount of money that can compensate for what he's lost. But there should be a much higher amount of time money that they should get because society needs to correct this and these are not disposable people.

00:38:06
Speaker 3: I've got tremendous support that we got the fronting the jete. We talk to the men on the telephone. Sometime we write them to the house. We sit down, but eat and help me get through whatever that's bothering them at this particular time. You know what I mean, because there's so much you can do at the immediate because I don't want to see nobody go through what I went through. And I know when I lay my head down tonight, somebody's being wrongfully convicted or even murdered, I mean by our loved government. Man, don't be afraid to speak up. Somebody will believe you. Thanks to Barbara Maddie, I'm living proof somebody will listen to you. You can write me. They got in the dress. They can write and I definitely will return your letter. I'm gonna do everything in my power before i leave this planet. Hopefully something changes, the law changes, something changes, because you know, if they did it to one of my family members, I would lose my shit.

00:39:08
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.

00:39:44
Speaker 4: We've worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.