OLDEST IRISH AMERICAN NEWSPAPER IN USA, ESTABLISHED IN 1928
Category: Archive

Former Boston cop’s bid for new trial is reversed

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Jim Smith

BOSTON — In a startling turn of events, a federal appeals court ruled Friday that former Boston police officer Ken Conley must begin serving his 34-month prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice in the case involving the brutal beating of black police officer Michael Cox. The court ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Robert Keeton made an error last year when he allowed a motion for a new trial for Conley.

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 Cox was severely beaten by fellow police officers 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 he was beaten.

Dozens of officers had converged at the 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 obvious that Cox was a cop, his attackers scattered, leaving him bleeding profusely with head and kidney injuries. During the commotion, Conley leaped a chain-link fence and apprehended one of the murder suspects.

Investigators, frustrated with the blue wall of silence that would surround this case, turned to the Irish-American cop from South Boston to help solve the crime.

"I believe he’s a scapegoat who was targeted and convicted because he’s from South Boston," said state Senator Stephen Lynch after Conley’s sentencing in 1998.

Sign up to The Irish Echo Newsletter

In December 1998, three officers, two black and one white, were found liable by a federal civil jury for the beating of Cox and a related offense. Conley was found not liable for any offense by that same jury, and yet he remains the only person ever criminally charged in the Cox case.

In granting Conley a new trial last June, Judge Keeton cited numerous "conflicts and contradictions in the record as a whole," as well as "newly discovered evidence" that came out at the civil trial. Keeton concluded that "it is in the interests of justice that a new trial be allowed."

But in its ruling last week, the appeals court said that Keeton applied an incorrect legal standard in considering Conley’s motion for a new trial and that prosecutors could not be blamed for withholding evidence that came to light only after Conley’s trial.

Conley’s friends and supporters, along with editorial boards of the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, expressed hope last year that the ongoing prosecution of Conley would end with Keeton’s ruling.

And in a stinging rebuke of the process earlier this week, the Boston Globe said: "This case has been a mockery of justice from the first blow struck against Cox on Jan. 25, 1995 to last Friday’s rejection of Conley’s bid for a new trial . . . "

Conley, who is described by family members as "shocked and devastated" by the appeals court ruling, huddled with his lawyer, Willie Davis, Monday evening to consider options available to him.

"At this point we haven’t ruled anything out, but it’s fair to say that the decision was a major disappointment for all of us," Davis said.

Other Articles You Might Like

Sign up to our Daily Newsletter

Click to access the login or register cheese