Boston cop’s fate still uncertain

Conley was convicted in June 1998 of lying to a grand jury about what he saw during the early morning hours of Jan. 25, 1995 when a black police officer, Michael Cox, was severely beaten by fellow cops who mistook him for one of several fleeing murder suspects.
Jurors concluded that Conley neither witnessed nor participated in the beating, but they agreed with federal prosecutor Theodore Merritt that Conley must have seen Cox at the scene moments before the beating, a charge that Conley denied.
In September 1998, Conley was sentenced to 34 months in federal prison, but his case has been before the Appeals Court multiple times since then.
Last August, federal judge William Young ruled that Conley did not get a fair trial because the government withheld crucial information from his lawyers. Young ordered that the charges against Conley be dismissed, but prosecutors appealed that decision to the Appeals Court.
Supporters of Conley have been claiming for years that the Irish-American cop from South Boston was a scapegoat who was targeted by frustrated federal prosecutors who were fed up with the “blue wall of silence” that surrounded this high-profile case.
In December 1998, a federal civil jury found three officers, two black and one white, liable for the beating and abandonment of Cox. That same jury found Conley not liable for any offense, and yet he remains the only person ever criminally charged in the case.
Conley’s new attorney, Robert S. Bennett, who is handling the case pro-bono at the request of Conley’s supporters, told the Echo that the case had “gotten personal” and that the government was “circling the wagons” around prosecutor Merritt, who withheld from the defense an FBI memorandum which revealed that the key witness against Conley, patrolman Richard Walker, had told agents that hypnosis might help him to recall the events surrounding the beating.
In oral arguments last month before the appeals court, the government argued that Judge Young’s order for dismissal of the charges “defies logic and is eminently unreasonable.”
The prosecution contends that the defense team, even without the FBI memorandum, was fully aware of Walker’s recall problems but had chosen not to challenge his testimony because it was helpful to Conley on particular issues.
The defense, on the other hand, argued that Judge Young was correct when he concluded last summer that the hypnosis remark could have opened up a new line of cross-examination favorable to Conley. A decision is expected soon.