Convicted Boston cop gets reprieve

By Jim Smith

BOSTON — Ken Conley, the only Boston police officer convicted in the 1995 attack on a black officer, Michael Cox, won another reprieve in court last Thursday when a federal judge demanded that prosecutors produce any documents that they may have withheld from the defense during Conley’s perjury trial in 1998.

Conley’s lawyers, Willie Davis and Frances Robinson, are seeking a new trial for Conley on the grounds that the government withheld from them a Boston police department internal affairs report in which a police officer initially identified another officer, not Conley, as being at the scene of the beating.

U.S. District Judge Robert Keeton told Assistant U.S. Attorney Theodore Merritt that he wants to know "about everything the government had access to and how much was disclosed. . . . I think it might have a bearing on whether I should grant a new trial."

Conley, who’s 31, is facing a 34-month sentence after a jury found him guilty of lying when he said he had not seen Cox, who was mistaken for a fleeing murder suspect, running up to a fence just before the attack.

That same jury found Conley not guilty of lying when he said he had neither participated in nor witnessed the brutal attack on Cox.

Judge Keeton has given the prosecution two weeks to produce the documents. He will then determine whether an evidentiary hearing should be held.