Sean Ellis, a Dorchester native who was imprisoned for 22 years after his conviction for the 1993 murder of Boston Police Detective John Mulligan, will not be re-tried for the crime for a fourth time, said Suffolk County District Attorney John Pappas at a news conference on Monday that also included remarks from Boston Police Commissioner William Gross.
Both men insist that Ellis— in their view— is the person responsible for the early-morning murder of Mulligan, who was gunned down in his vehicle in a Roslindale parking lot. But, they say, the passage of time and revelations about three other Boston Police detectives— all associates of Mulligan –who were later found guilty in a rash of corruption charges makes Ellis’s re-conviction unlikely.
While relieved by the DA’s decision, Ellis, who has consistently denied that he was involved in any way with the Mulligan killing, is not satisfied with law enforcement’s public insistence that he was the perpetrator.
“The unwillingness to fully and publicly exonerate me… I didn’t commit the crime. I really believe that they know that I didn’t commit the crime. So why not just come out and see that’s what it is?” Ellis told WCVB-TV this week.
Ellis was found guilty— as Pappas noted on Monday—for “possessing the murder weapon and Det. Mulligan’s service weapon, which was stolen from his body.”
But Pappas also had to acknowledge that “the involvement of three corrupt police detectives to varying degrees in the investigation compromised our ability to put the best possible case before a jury.” Detectives Kenneth Acerra, Walter Robinson, and John Brazil, Pappas said, “disgraced themselves and tarnished their badges in a wide variety of criminal conduct unrelated to this case – the extent of which was unknown to prosecutors or defense counsel in 1995.”
Police and prosecutors insist that there’s no evidence that the three detectives steered evidence to frame Ellis or a second man, Terry Patterson, who was also found guilty of the crime. Still, they admit that the passage of 25 years coupled with the police misconduct would make another trial for Ellis imprudent.
“Perhaps more than any other factor, their shameful conduct presents a major challenge to our ability to put a successful case to a new jury,” said Pappas.
Ellis’s legal team has long argued that police misconduct could well have played a role in Mulligan’s death and/or the investigation that followed. That dynamic was, in fact, central to the 2015 decision by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court that resulted in Ellis’s release from prison and an order for a new trial. The court decision specifically cited instances in which tips leading toward other potential scenarios or suspects were never pursued or made available to the defense.
Ellis, who has been the subject of frequent articles in this newspaper over the last decade, will never likely be exonerated for the crime for which he was initially convicted. Those who believe he was involved might find solace in the fact that he did serve 22 years in prison for the crime.
Whether you are troubled by Ellis’s incarceration or by his release, there’s one clear-cut message from this whole debacle: Corruption by public servants — in this case police officials—remains an insidious, corrosive enemy to justice and the public trust long after its active agents have left the scene.
– Bill Forry
