Judge decides to keep Drumgold civil rights case alive

April 10, 2008 01:16 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff

Shawn Drumgold's civil rights lawsuit against the Boston Police is still alive, but barely.

The day after a federal jury all but cleared two former city detectives who were sued for allegedly violating Drumgold's right to a fair trial in an infamous 1988 murder, US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner today allowed the case to continue on the only one of 11 claims in which jurors sided with Drumgold.

The jury found that one of the detectives, Timothy Callahan, violated Drumgold's civil rights by concealing that Callahan gave a crucial prosecution witness cash before the witness testified at the 1989 murder trial.

Drumgold was convicted of murdering 12-year-old Darlene Tiffany Moore and served 15 years before several witnesses recanted in 2003 and a state judge, concluding he was wrongfully convicted, threw out the verdict.

Callahan's lawyer, Mary Jo Harris, argued this morning that the detective admitted in the federal lawsuit that he gave Ricky Evans, a homeless teenager, $20. Evans later testified that he saw Drumgold near the scene where Moore was felled by two stray bullets in an apparent gang shooting

But Harris urged the judge to throw out the sole verdict in Drumgold's favor because, she said, such a small sum could not have tipped the case against Drumgold.

Gertner rejected the argument. She said Evans testified in the federal trial that Callahan was a virtual ATM for him. It is up to the federal jury to decide whether Drumgold might have been acquitted if his criminal defense lawyers knew about the money and presented that evidence at his murder trial, she said.

``If the jury has come back and said, `Mr. Drumgold's rights were violated in this one particular' [instance], I'm not going to say that it's unimportant,'' she said.

Gertner said she will order the jury in the lawsuit to return to court Monday. Lawyers for Drumgold and the city will then argue to the jury about whether the single civil rights violation caused his wrongful conviction. If the jury concludes that it did, she said, she will let jurors award damages.

She also said she will decide later today or tomorrow whether to let Drumgold testify Monday, before the arguments, about how his life was affected by the wrongful conviction.