February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Conley, who is now 35, was convicted in June 1998 of lying to a grand jury about what he saw during the early hours of Jan. 25, 1995 when a black fellow officer, Michael Cox, was severely beaten by fellow cops who mistook him for a fleeing murder suspect. Jurors concluded that Conley neither witnessed nor participated in the beating, but they agreed with prosecutors who argued that Conley must have seen Cox at the scene moments before the attack. In September 1998, Conley was sentenced to 34 months in prison.
During the night in question, dozens of police officers converged at a Mattapan cul-de-sac in pursuit of four murder suspects when Cox, in plain clothes, was set upon and beaten by other officers. Once it became clear that Cox was a policeman, the attacking officers scattered, leaving him bleeding profusely from head and kidney injuries. During the commotion at the scene, Conley leaped a chain-link fence and apprehended one of the murder suspects.
The conviction and sentencing of Conley in 1998 sparked a firestorm of protest throughout South Boston and beyond, with supporters claiming that the Irish-American cop was scapegoated by overly zealous prosecutors eager for a conviction and frustrated with the so-called “blue wall of silence” that surrounded the high-profile case for over two years.
In December 1998, three officers, two black and one white, were found liable by a federal civil jury for the beating and abandonment of Cox. Conley was found not liable for any offense by that same jury, and yet he remains the only person ever criminally charged in the case.
At the St. Patrick’s Day parade in South Boston in 1999, thousands of residents wore stickers demanding “Justice for Kenny Conley.” Eventually, newspaper editorialists, police officers, and politicians from near and far joined in the chorus of support for Conley while calling his conviction a travesty of justice.
Even the judge who presided over the 1998 trial eventually decided in 2000 that Conley deserved a new trial based upon newly discovered evidence and “conflicts and contradictions in the record as a whole.” But the U.S. Attorney’s office appealed that decision, and the case has been the subject of recurring appellate reviews ever since.
Adding fuel to the ire of Conley’s supporters was the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2001 award to the chief prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Theodore Merritt, citing him for “superior performance” in his prosecution of Conley.
In a brief filed in 2002, Conley’s new attorney, Robert S. Bennett of Washington, D.C., stated that “the prosecution’s razor-thin case was wholly circumstantial and depended completely on the credibility of a few problematic witnesses.” The U.S. Court of Appeals in March 2003 seemed to agree with Bennett, concluding that the case relied on testimony of “different actors at different times in a confused and changing scene in the dark of night.” It determined that questions about evidence possibly being withheld “are questions worth answering with care, whatever time it takes to answer them.”
The Appeals Court then turned the case over to Judge Young, who presumably spent much of the last year poring over evidence before concluding last week that prosecutor Merritt should have provided the defense with the text of an interview of Patrolman Richard Walker, whose testimony was used to place Conley at the scene of Cox’s beating. According to court documents, Walker offered varying accounts of events and told FBI agents that he might need to be “hypnotized” in order to recall what happened.
Prosecutors now have 60 days to refile charges against Conley, but that prospect is seen as unlikely because of the public outcry that would ensue if the government decides to expend further time and resources on the case.
Contacted Saturday at his home in the town of Norwood, where he works as a carpenter, Conley said that he was happy and relieved to know that this is finally coming to an end,” he said. “It’s been a long road, and for the first time in a long time the future is starting to look bright.”
Although many of his former fellow officers are urging him to return to the Boston police department, Conley and his wife will be taking some time before making any decisions about the future.