Man admits to slaying for which another man was convicted

By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

A miscarriage of justice was corrected in a Boston courtroom today when John Tibbs admitted he shot and killed Tennyson Drakes and wounded three others, a 1995 shooting that sent another man to state prison.

Marlon Passley was identified by survivors as the triggerman, was convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996. His family insisted he was in Wellesley watching a relative graduate.

Four years later, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley's chief homicide prosecutor, David Meier, learned from a drug dealer that Tibbs was the actual shooter, and had Passley's conviction erased.

In Suffolk Superior Court today, Tibbs was about to go on trial for the second time -- a Suffolk Superior Court jury deadlocked in the first-degree murder case last year -- when he agreed to plead to the lesser charge of manslaughter, said John H. Cunha, his attorney.

Cunha said that under the plea agreement, Tibbs will be sentenced to nine to 10 years in state prison, dating back to 2001 when he was first charged with shooting Drakes. The manslaughter sentence will be served concurrently with a 27-year federal sentence Tibbs is already serving, he said.

Cunha also said prosecutors have agreed to drop drug possession charges filed against Tibbs.

Conley said the resolution of the case was a "historic accomplishment."

"We've achieved justice today, but we also, finally, righted a wrong more than a decade later," Conley said in a statement. "Marlon Passley was arrested, tried, and convicted. His conviction was affirmed and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a crime he did not commit. That we were able to exonerate him and build a successful case against the real shooter is unprecedented in Massachusetts."

Tibbs is to be sentenced by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Peter Lauriat on Tuesday.

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