Drumgold describes prison beatings

Then one night in November 2003, his lawyer called to tell him that he was about to become a free man. A state judge set aside his conviction after finding that "justice was not done'' and prosecutors said they would not retry him.

Today, a civil jury in US District Court in Boston will decide how much in damages he should receive from a retired Boston police detective who was found liable for failing to turn over evidence during Drumgold's trial.

The 11-member jury found last week that the former detective, Timothy Callahan, violated Drumgold's civil rights by concealing that he had supplied Ricky Evans, a key prosecution witness, with free housing at Howard Johnson's motel, fed him repeatedly, and paid him $20.

Moore was slain Aug. 19, 1988, in a shooting that came to symbolize an epidemic of street violence in Boston. She was struck by two stray bullets as she sat on a mailbox on a Roxbury street corner, talking to friends. Two gunmen wearing Halloween masks and black clothes fired at a crowd in what police contended was a gang shooting that felled an innocent bystander.

Evans was a key witness in the 1989 state murder trial in Suffolk County that ended with Drumgold’s conviction. A Globe investigative report in May 2003 challenged many aspects of the conviction, including favorable treatment of Evans that jurors were unaware of.

Evans recanted his testimony at a hearing the same year, prompting a state judge to overturn the conviction and free Drumgold. Prosecutors opted not to retry Drumgold but stopped short of saying he was innocent.

In closing arguments today during the damages phase of the case, attorney Hugh Curran argued on behalf of Callahan. Curran told the jury that it was the prosecutor's duty to disclose that the witness had been housed at a hotel, not his client's.

"I suggest that the law is very clear that the obligation of disclosure of material, exculpatory evidence, falls squarely on the shoulders of the district attorney's office,'' Curran said.

But Drumgold's attorney, Rosemary Scapicchio, reminded the jury that they had already determined that Callahan was responsible for withholding evidence that resulted in a wrongful conviction.

"I want you to focus on what happened to Shawn Drumgold in those 15 years he spent in jail,'' Scapicchio said. "How do you ever compensate somebody for 15 years of their life? You don't get those years back.''