A Massachusetts man who spent 27 years in jail for a murder he claims that he didn't commit has been awarded $13 million by a jury.
Michael Sullivan, 64, got a degree of justice when a Massachusetts jury ruled that he was innocent of the 1986 murder and robbery of Wilfred McGrath.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.
“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.” 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.”
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.
“It’s hard for me,” he said. “I don’t go nowhere. I’m scared all the time ... I'm pretty much a loner.” “If he didn’t have me, my brother would have been walking the streets like a lot of the homeless people,” Faria said. “It's almost like he don't trust people. If he is around his family, he feels safe. If he is not, he doesn’t.”
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