Man sues state after 27 years in prison
Conviction was tossed in 2021; seeks $1 million
A man who spent 27 years in prison before his murder conviction was thrown out in 2021 has filed a lawsuit against the state, seeking $1 million for his wrongful incarceration, records show.
James Lucien, 50, filed suit in Suffolk Superior Court against the Commonwealth on Friday, the sole defendant named in the civil action. The monetary award being sought is the maximum available to him under a state law dealing with wrongful convictions, legal filings show.
“He spent the prime years of his life incarcerated in harsh conditions, facing physical and emotional threats,” said Lucien’s 15-page civil complaint. “He lost valuable time and experience with his family. The harms his wrongful conviction have caused him — emotional, physical, and otherwise — have been profound and can never fully be compensated.”
A request for comment that was sent to a Healey administration spokesperson was not answered.
In December 2021, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Robert Ullmann tossed Lucien’s firstdegree murder and robbery convictions for the 1994 fatal shooting of Ryan Edwards during a drug transaction in Roxbury.
Edwards was shot and killed on the night of June 25, 1994. Lucien, then 22, and a friend were going to buy cocaine from Edwards and his half-brother, Alford Clarke, prosecutors said at trial.
A single bullet struck Edwards, killing him as he sat in a car. At the time, police and prosecutors relied on the testimony of Clarke, who testified that he was in the car and that Lucien pulled a gun and robbed them, shooting Edwards from the backseat.
In Friday’s complaint, lawyers for Lucien said that corrupt Boston police officials, including Detective John Brazil, had produced false testimony and other tainted evidence.
The Globe has reported that Brazil, who in 1998 testified with immunity in federal court about his own misconduct and the corruption of fellow officers, was part of a unit of Boston officers who falsified evidence in the 1990s and stole money from drug dealers.
That’s precisely what happened in Lucien’s case, according to his complaint.
The lawsuit said Brazil stole money from Edwards’s car and also likely stole cash from his clothes at the hospital to bolster the robbery charge, the filing said.
Brazil couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. A spokesperson for the Boston Police Department declined to comment on Lucien’s lawsuit.
The complaint said Edwards survived the shooting long enough to tell another responding officer that someone standing outside his vehicle fired the shot, not Lucien from inside the car, as Clarke later testified.
Clarke, whom court papers described as a drug dealer, was standing outside the car at the time of the shooting and fled the scene, hiding a handgun he was carrying.
“Edwards’ dying declaration” to police “that someone outside of the car shot him, without naming Clarke, was an effort to shield his half-brother from being implicated,” the lawsuit said.
After hiding his gun, Clarke returned to the scene and spoke with Brazil, the filing said.
He admitted to Brazil and another detective that he was carrying a gun at the time of the shooting that was “the same caliber” as the weapon that killed Edwards, the lawsuit said.
The conversation was only partially recorded and despite Clarke’s admissions, detectives “instead focused” on his drug dealing, with Brazil pressuring him to disclose “where he kept his drug and money stash,” the filing said.
According to the lawsuit, Brazil and other investigators hid “that Clarke had the same caliber gun the night of the murder.” Brazil “expressly fabricated a story” that Clarke had traded away the incriminating gun before the fatal shooting, according to the lawsuit.
Brazil also promised to help Clarke with his immigration issues “in exchange for his testimony,” a vow that went unfulfilled as Clarke was deported to Jamaica in 1995 after testifying, according to the lawsuit and previous Globe reporting.
When Lucien was freed in 2021, then-Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins had said that in addition to dropping the murder case, her office also wrote to federal immigration authorities urging them to grant Clarke a visa.
Rollins said at the time that a family that had lost one son to homicide had “effectively lost a second son, Alford, as well.”
“Alford delivered on his promise to testify,” Rollins wrote at the time. “This Office never delivered on ours. That changes today.”
Clarke’s whereabouts couldn’t immediately be determined Monday and he couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Lucien’s lawsuit also alleged that Brazil and other investigators “destroyed” evidence from inside the car without testing the vehicle for gunshot residue.
“The Commonwealth claimed that [Lucien] shot Edwards from inside of the car,” the lawsuit said. “This would have generated substantial physical evidence of a gunshot discharge.”
After Lucien was freed, he said his release had been a long time coming.
“I’ve been waiting for a whole 27 years for this,” he said in 2021. “And now I have an opportunity to be free.”
Overwhelmed by his release and a crush of television cameras, Lucien could only summon one more complete sentence: “I didn’t do it.”