Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Robert Mulligan recent­ly over­turned Laurence Adams’ con­vic­tion for a 1972 mur­der of a tran­sit work­er because police had with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence. Adams had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1974 based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of two wit­ness­es who had unre­lat­ed charges dropped fol­low­ing the tri­al.

The gov­ern­men­t’s key wit­ness tes­ti­fied that Adams had admit­ted to the offense in a dis­cus­sion in a pri­vate home, but sub­se­quent­ly dis­cov­ered records indi­cat­ed that the wit­ness was actu­al­ly incar­cer­at­ed at the time that he alleged the con­ver­sa­tion took place. Adams’ court-appoint­ed attor­ney was also rep­re­sent­ing anoth­er sus­pect in the case, a clear con­flict of inter­est. Adams’ death sen­tence was reduced to life with­out parole when the death penal­ty was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1974. Charges against Adams were for­mal­ly dropped on June 7, 2004. (Boston Globe, May 20 & 21, 2004; New York Times, June 8, 2004.)

There have now been 118 for­mer death row inmates freed fol­low­ing their exon­er­a­tions. Adams’ is the most recent case to come to DPIC’s atten­tion but is num­ber 115 in chronological order.

Click Here to Read More on Adams’ case.

Click Here to Read DPIC’s Latest Innocence Report.

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