BOSTON—A witness whose testimony helped convict a man in the notorious gang murder of a 12-year-old girl said Wednesday that he lied on the stand after detectives put him up in hotel, provided food and cash and told him they would clear his outstanding warrants.
Ricky Evans testified in the first day of Shawn Drumgold's civil rights suit against the city of Boston, saying he had apologized to Drumgold and wanted to make things right.
"It was like a constant thing on my mind, knowing that I lied," Evans said. "I had something to do with a man being in prison for something he didn't do."
Drumgold, 42, spent 15 years in prison for the 1988 killing of Darlene Tiffany Moore, who was killed in a gang crossfire as she sat on a mailbox in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. Her death in 1988 ignited citywide outrage over gang violence.
Drumgold was freed in 2003 after prosecutors who re-examined the case found he didn't receive a fair trial, though they never said he was innocent.
Their investigation, opened after witnesses told The Boston Globe they were bullied into testifying against Drumgold, included a finding that a key witness had a form of brain cancer that can affect perception and memory that was never disclosed to the defense.
Drumgold sued the city of Boston in 2004, naming now-retired police detectives Timothy Callahan and Richard Walsh, who investigated Moore's murder.
"Shawn Drumgold spent 15 years in jail because the defendants, Detective Walsh and Detective Callahan, thought they were above the law," Drumgold's attorney, Rosemary Scapicchio, said in opening statements Tuesday.
But Hugh Curran, one of the detective's lawyers, said the new testimony from witnesses who once supported the prosecution was "all smoke and mirrors."
Curran said the detectives did their jobs correctly, and their case against Drumgold was built on more than just testimony from the several witnesses who've recanted.
"They worked this case within the rules to the best of their abilities," Curran said.
Evans, who had no permanent address at the time Moore was killed, said he knew Callahan from when he was shot and his cousin killed in an earlier case.
He said Callahan showed him several pictures of suspects in the Moore killing, including Drumgold, but wouldn't accept it when he picked a photo of a man widely rumored in the neighborhood to have killed Moore.
Evans said police checked him into a local Howard Johnson's, where he stayed several months. He said he ate as much as he wanted at the restaurant, paying by signing his room number, and would get $30 to $50 in cash from Callahan when he needed it. He also said Callahan told him several outstanding warrants would be "wiped out."
Evans said he never saw Drumgold the night of the murder. But he said Callahan and another detective would visit him in the hotel restaurant and talk to each other about Drumgold's case, dropping details such as the kind of gun Drumgold allegedly used and what he wearing at the time of Moore's murder.
Evans said he later pieced the information into his testimony at Drumgold's trial.
"Most of my testimony back then was a lie," Evans said. "I would pick up on things they said and I would turn it into testimony."
Defense attorneys had just a couple minutes to cross examine Evans on Wednesday before the trial adjourned for the day. But Mary Jo Harris, an attorney for the detectives, said in her opening statement that the charge that Callahan "planted this story in the mind of Ricky Evans is not going to withstand scrutiny."
She also said there's no evidence Evans' outstanding warrants were cleared. She said she agreed with the plaintiffs on one thing about Evans.
"The fact that Ricky Evans is a liar, I don't think is going to be contested here," Harris said.
