Massachusetts: For the nearly three decades that he was behind bars, Michael Sullivan’s mother and four siblings died, his girlfriend moved on with her life and he was badly beaten in several prison attacks. All for a murder he long insisted he never committed. Earlier this month, the 64-year-old Sullivan got a degree of justice when a Massachusetts jury ruled that he was innocent of the 1986 murder and robbery of Wilfred McGrath. He was awarded USD 13 million, though state regulations cap rewards at USD 1 million for wrongful convictions. The jury also found a state police chemist falsely testified at the trial though his testimony isn’t what guaranteed Sullivan’s conviction.
It’s the latest in a string of convictions that have been overturned in the state in recent years. “The most important thing is finding me innocent of the murder, expunging it from my record,” said Sullivan, speaking at the Framingham, Massachusetts, office of his lead attorney Michael Heineman. “The money, of course, will be very helpful to me.” A spokesman for the Massachusetts attorney general said, “We respect the jury’s verdict and are evaluating whether an appeal is appropriate.”
What happened with Sullivan in 1987?
Sullivan was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 after police say McGrath was robbed and beaten and his body dumped behind an abandoned supermarket. Authorities zeroed in on Sullivan after they learned his sister had been out with McGrath the night before the murder and the two had gone to the apartment she shared with Sullivan. Another suspect in the murder, Gary Grace, implicated Sullivan and had his murder charges dropped.
Grace testified at the trial that Sullivan was wearing a purple jacket the night of the murder and a former State Police chemist testified that he found blood on the jacket and a hair consistent with McGrath, not Sullivan’s. Sullivan was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Grace, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to accessory after a murder, and was sentenced to 6 years. Emil Petrla, who beat McGrath and helped dispose of his body, pleaded to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole but he died in prison.
“I couldn’t believe I was convicted of murder”
“I couldn’t believe I was convicted of murder,” Sullivan said, recalling prosecutors mentioned the purple jacket five times in their closing argument. “My mother was crying in the courtroom, my brother was crying. I was crying. It was very hard for me and my family.”
Prison would prove a nightmare for Sullivan. He had his nose almost bitten off in one attack and nearly lost an ear in another. And because he was a lifer, the prison system didn’t allow him to take any classes to gain much-needed skills “It’s very hard on a person, especially when you know you’re innocent,” Sullivan said. “And prison is a bad life, you know. Prison is a tough life.”
But in 2011, Sullivan’s fortunes changed dramatically.
DNA testing
Sullivan’s attorney requested DNA testing, which had not been available for the first trial, that found no blood on the coat. The testing also found substances on the coat did not contain McGrath’s DNA and could not determine if the hair found on a jacket belonged to him. Dana Curhan, a Boston attorney who represented Sullivan from 1992 until 2014 and pushed for the DNA testing, said Sullivan had always told him McGrath’s blood wasn’t on the jacket. But he was surprised to learn there wasn’t any blood, which undermined the prosecutor’s argument that Sullivan had beaten McGrath into a “blood pulp.”
“At the prosecutor’s closing, he essentially said, ‘Hey, if he wasn’t the one who did it, why did they find blood on both of cuffs of the jacket?’” Curhan said. “He kept repeating that. Now, we don’t have any blood nor a DNA match. You would expect someone doing what he was alleged to have done to be covered in blood. There is no blood. That really was the case.”
Sullivan was released in 2013
A new trial was ordered in 2012 and Sullivan was released in 2013. He spent the first six months on home confinement and had to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for years. “When I walked out the front door, I was in an emotional state, he said. In 2014, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld a decision to grant Sullivan a new trial and, in 2019, the state decided against retrying the case. At the time, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said it was virtually impossible for her office to successfully retry the case against Sullivan given the deaths of some witnesses, and a diminishment of the memories of other potential witnesses.
Sullivan admits he “shut down” after he was released and, to this day, struggles to function in a world that changed dramatically while he was in prison. Before he was arrested, he had worked at a peanut factory and had planned to go to school to become a truck driver and eventually work for his brother who owned a trucking company. Instead, he left prison with no job prospects and little hope of finding work. He still can’t use a computer and mostly helps his sister with odd jobs. His girlfriend, whom he had known since he was 12, would visit him for a decade in prison but eventually “had to go on with her life.” “I’m still really not adjusted to the outside world,” Sullivan said, adding that he spends much of his time with his Yorkshire terrier Buddy and pigeons that he keeps at his sister’s house.
“It’s hard for me,” he said. “I don’t go nowhere. I’m scared all the time … I’m pretty much a loner.”
(With inputs from agency)
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