Man wrongly convicted is found slain in Randolph

RANDOLPH - Three years after being exonerated of the shooting of a Boston police officer, Stephan Cowans moved into a large house here on a suburban cul-de-sac, drove his new Mercedes or BMW to counseling sessions, and spent time with his grandmother.

His efforts to move on from the nightmare that consumed his life a decade ago ended Thursday, when police found him shot to death in his four-bedroom, two-story Colonial-style house.

Cowans, 37, who spent six years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of shooting Sergeant Gregory Gallagher in 1997, was apparently targeted by someone whom he let into his home, said Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating.

"There's a sad kind of irony that a person who had a second chance found himself in this position," Keating said during a press conference in front of police headquarters here.

Cowans, whose mother died while he was in prison, was exonerated after the New England Innocence Project persuaded a judge to allow testing of DNA evidence recovered near the crime scene in Roxbury. The DNA was not his. Authorities reexamined a crucial fingerprint from the scene and realized that officers had misidentified it as Cowans's.

The wrongful conviction led to the temporary closure of the Police Department's fingerprint unit and changes in how evidence is gathered and analyzed.

Last year, Cowans won a $3.2 million settlement in a federal lawsuit against the City of Boston in which he contended that the Police Department had violated his civil rights. He also received $500,000 from the state under terms of the wrongful-conviction compensation law.

In a phone interview, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley called the case "a human tragedy."

He described the error at the Boston Police Department as "a glaring mistake" and said it was a "huge error that convicted him."

"I admired him that he wasn't bitter," said Conley, who later shook Cowans's hand and apologized on behalf of the criminal justice system. "If it was me, I don't know if I could not be bitter. This was a human tragedy, and it's a real tragedy that his life ended the way it did."

Elaine Driscoll, a spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department, declined to comment. Gallagher, who was shot in the upper thigh and back with his 9mm Glock service pistol, remains on the force. He could not be reached yesterday.

The lawyers who helped free Cowans said they did not know why someone would have targeted him.

Joseph Savage, Jr., the chairman of the New England Innocence Project who represented Cowans since 2003, said his client was working on stitching his life back together. Since his release, he had been arrested several times, once for allegedly assaulting his former girlfriend.

"He had some struggles after that, but he was really trying to work on keeping his life together, but it was hard," Savage said. "It's common for folks wrongfully convicted to go through huge emotional losses trying to pick up their lives."

Robert Feldman, an Innocence Project lawyer who won Cowans's exoneration, had frequent conversations with him over the past three years.

"I know he was working on building a happy life," said Feldman, who was drawn to Cowans's case by his repeated, adamant denial of his guilt.

"There was something about Stephan and the way he described his situation that made me believe that something might have gone horribly wrong with his case," Feldman said. "I'm shocked and deeply saddened by this tragedy."

David Hosp, who represented Cowans in his civil suits and wrote a legal thriller loosely based on Cowans's case, said that when the two spoke several months ago, Cowans sounded "like someone who was trying to overcome the baggage of a very difficult past."

He added: "Everyone who worked with him cared very deeply for him, and we're all devastated by his death. He was a guy who was smart, funny, decent, and, for all the difficulties he faced stemming from very difficult and extraordinarily unfortunate circumstances, he remained a very decent person."

The Globe interviewed Cowans in July, days before publication of Hosp's novel, "Innocence," and Cowans cracked jokes and chatted amiably. He was delighted his saga had been transformed into fiction.

Cowans moved to Arizona for a short time, in part because of the legal problems he had in Boston since his release, he said. He said lawyers from the Innocence Project urged him to get away from Massachusetts for a while.

"I had a few emotional issues that I had to deal with," he said. "Just being in the setting of Boston was making it difficult for me. Driving through Roxbury and Jamaica Plain became overwhelming. I had to really step back from the situation."

Despite his harrowing experience with the criminal justice system, he said, he still believed it worked.

"If something is done in the dark, such as corruption within the judicial system, it will ultimately come to the light," he said.

Cowans, who had a record of petty crime before his arrest in the Gallagher shooting, expressed confidence that he was turning his life around.

"I'm maturing every day," he said. "I'm basically trying to live my life, abide by the rules, and keep my nose clean. . . . I do believe everything happened for a reason. Everything turned out good in this situation."

Yesterday, yellow police tape surrounded Cowans's new home as investigators looked for evidence in his BMW and Mercedes.

Keating said an acquaintance called police after looking through a window of the house and seeing Cowans on his back, beside a pool of blood.

It was the third homicide of the year in Randolph, one more than last year, said Randolph Police Chief Paul Porter, adding that Cowans had had no problems with local police since he moved to Randolph earlier this year.

Keating would only say there appeared to be a fight between the assailant and Cowans.

"We're trying to find out exactly what happened," he said.

Jonathan Saltzman and Maria Cramer of the Globe staff contributed to this report. David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.