Six suing state for years spent wrongly in prison
Six men who spent years behind bars in Massachusetts for crimes they didn't commit are each seeking up to $500,000 in compensation from the state under a new law that went on the books in January, state officials and lawyers said yesterday.
Lawyer Johnson and Neil Miller, both freed after spending a decade in prison, filed legal motions in Suffolk Superior Court requesting the compensation Wednesday. Their claims add to four other cases filed earlier this year. Johnson was freed in 1982 after a witness identified the shooter in a murder that had led to his conviction. Miller was freed in 1990 after DNA evidence cleared him of a rape.
''My life has been a wreck, and I'm still recovering from the devastation that started in 1972," Johnson said yesterday. ''My life has been in limbo. God knows where I would be if I hadn't gone through that injustice."
The six cases are the first filed under a law providing up to $500,000 in damages for those wrongfully convicted.
Four other wrongfully convicted men -- Dennis Maher, Marvin Mitchell, John Scullin, and Eduardo Velasquez (who went by the name Angel Hernandez) -- are also seeking damages from the state.
Under the law, passed by the Legislature late last year, exonerated individuals must seek a civil trial to make their case for the compensation. They have to provide evidence of their innocence either through a court order overturning the conviction or a governor's pardon. The former prisoners are allowed to receive up to $500,000, allowing the court to take into account lost income and other factors in determining the amount of the award.
Massachusetts joined more than a dozen other states with similar laws, including New York and Illinois, said Peter Neufeld, cofounder and codirector of The Innocence Project in New York City, which works to exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners across the nation. Neufeld also serves as cocounsel on several cases already filed in Massachusetts superior courts.
''This statute is long overdue, and we're very optimistic that the attorney general will be supportive of these men and not treat these cases in an adversary way, but rather do everything humanly possible to provide quick, meaningful compensation for these people," Neufeld said.
The attorney general represents the state in the trials.
The move to compensate all of the wrongly convicted has taken years to become law. In 1982, state senators drafted a special act to compensate Johnson, a Roxbury native who was framed by a neighborhood acquaintance for the murder of a Chelsea man. A witness testified years later that the neighbor, Kenneth Myers, committed the murder. The Legislature did not pass that bill.
During the 1980s and early '90s, state lawmakers filed bills that addressed individuals who were wrongfully convicted, such as Johnson and Bobby Joe Leaster, who received $500,000 in 1992 from a special act of the Legislature.
In a legal claim filed Wednesday, Miller said he was ''subjected to mistreatment and abuse by guards and inmates alike" while imprisoned. Johnson, who is black, said in court papers that he was convicted of killing a white man ''in a highly charged trial at the beginning of the Boston busing crisis."
Johnson, 54, said in an interview yesterday that he picked up a drug habit and a tendency toward depression while in prison. Johnson added that he has not been able to get a job and lives in a drug treatment center, where he is trying to kick the addiction he fostered in prison.
The new law stipulates that wrongfully convicted prisoners freed before this year have three years from Jan. 1 to file their cases for compensation. For those exonerated in the future, the former prisoners must file for compensation within two years of leaving prison to collect damages.
Janette Neuwahl can be reached at jneuwahl@globe.com. 