Four days after a judge overturned his conviction for the 1988 murder of 12-year-old Darlene Tiffany Moore, Shawn Drumgold lightheartedly reflected Monday on his new freedom, while his lawyer lashed out against prosecutors and police for allowing innocent people to be wrongfully imprisoned.
Drumgold, who spoke at a press conference, expressed disappointment in the system, but said, ‘I’m not angry at anyone.’ He focused most of his comments on reuniting with his family and the small changes in the world that have struck him since his release from prison.
William Leahy, chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, and Rosemary Scapicchio, Drumgold’s appellate attorney, used the public venue to express their grievances with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and with the public detectives who investigated the murder.
In May, Boston Globe investigations, led by Boston University professor and Globe investigative reporter Dick Lehr, found several former witnesses who said they were intimidated by Boston Police during 1989 questioning and manipulated by prosecutors into lying on the stand to implicate Drumgold as the murderer.
On Thursday, Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Rouse overturned Drumgold’s conviction and set him free after 14 years in prison.
Scapicchio said she was ‘shocked by the reaction of the Suffolk County District Attorney for disclaiming any responsibility and for failing to conduct an investigation into what went wrong.’
She is ‘calling upon the legislature and the governor to appoint an independent commission to conduct an investigation,’ she said.
Leahy called for Gov. Mitt Romney to appoint a commission to investigate all wrongful imprisonments. Citing as an example the state of Illinois, which commuted all standing death sentences in January after 13 people on death row were found to be innocent, Leahy said he hopes the new commission will help cure ‘a criminal justice system where mistakes are rampant.’
‘Drumgold is the tip of the iceberg,’ Leahy said.
Scapicchio and Leslie Walker, executive director for Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said at least 10 percent of inmates in Massachusetts prisons are innocent.
Scapicchio said people need to be held accountable.
‘Without figuring out the why and the how,’ she said, more people will wrongfully go to prison.
‘It is time for a very public debate about a most troubling question,’ said Charles McGinty, president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, in a written statement. ‘How could so many innocent persons have been wrongly convicted? What went so terribly wrong?’
Drumgold said he was just happy with his release.
‘This is a great day for me and my family,’ Drumgold said, as his mother Juanda and wife Rachelle sat at the table with him and his brother and sister, Karen and Laurence, looked on from the audience.
As a converted Muslim, Drumgold pointed to his faith in God, along with his loyal wife, his 15-year-old daughter Kiara and other family as motivation to sustain hope.
Drumgold’s sister said she prepared a fried chicken and broccoli dinner for him last night, and pointed out that because it is Ramadan, Drumgold is fasting until sundown each day.
The world is a different place than it was more than 10 years ago when Drumgold first entered prison, he said.
He said he was impressed with how small today’s cell phones are and said he had trouble turning one on and off. He also said he was struck by the new $20 bill, saying it looked like Monopoly money.
‘I feel like I’m out of place,’ he said.
Drumgold said, there are ‘so many new buildings here in Boston … It’s beautiful.’ And he said he noticed new homes where there used to be empty lots in his Roxbury neighborhood.
When asked about the possibility of a civil action, Scapicchio said she and Drumgold have not discussed it, but it is ‘out there as a possibility.’
City Councilor Chuck Turner (Roxbury, Mission Hill) also attended the press conference.
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