Connecticut man's arrest on armed-robbery charges in Jamaica Plain actually a homecoming of sorts

A Connecticut man arrested early Sunday on charges he robbed a man of his scooter in Jamaica Plain is actually a Roxbury native who only last week won early cancellation of his probation on a federal cocaine-distribution conviction stemming from a search of his Roxbury room in 2009 during a murder investigation, court records show.

Just this past Thursday, US District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor cut Christopher Jamison, 35, free from the remaining 2 1/2 years of his federal "supervised release" after both Jamison's attorney and the US Attorney's office in Boston agreed he had not gotten into any trouble since his release from prison in November, 2017, had never tested positive for narcotics and had a "stable living condition" that included a full-time job as a maintenance worker for a property-management firm just outside Bridgeport, where he had lived since his release.

The original five years of supervised release was a condition of his plea deal in 2011 on the coke charge, which also included a ten-year federal prison sentence, less time he had served in state custody following his initial arrest in January, 2009.

As part of the deal, federal prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition for the gun loaded with one bullet police found during the search of his room in his mother's apartment in an investigation into the shooting murder of Anthony Perry on Centre Street in Jackson Square in January, 2009.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's office, in fact, had originally charged Jamison with Perry's murder just a couple days after Perry''s death, but dropped all its charges in January, 2011 - about two months after federal prosecutors formally charged him as a felon in possession of a handgun for the gun found in his room.

Federal prosecutors later added a second charge - possession of cocaine with intent to distribute - before reaching the plea deal with his attorney in June, 2011. Had he gone to trial, he was facing up to 20 years in prison if convicted for the gun loaded with a single bullet and 18 bags of cocaine police say they found in his room.

According to an affidavit by an ATF agent who worked on the case, Jamison was convicted on a state cocaine-distribution charge and resisting arrest in Roxbury District Court in 2006.

Prosecutors almost weren't able to use the gun and cocaine because two BPD cops assigned to guard the apartment Jamison shared with his mother didn't stay outside while a detective obtained a search warrant but instead went inside and made themselves comfortable. A state judge ruled that was a serious enough Constitutional violation to toss out the evidence - but then ruled that because the detective who sought the search warrant developed her information independently, with no connection to the two couch sitters, the evidence was not tainted and so could be used against Jamison.

At the time of his arrest in 2009, police described Jamison as a member of the H Block Gang, which had a long running feud with the Heath Street Gang, based at what was then the Bromley-Heath Apartments, outside of which Perry was gunned down.

In 2006, Jamison's testimony before a Suffolk County grand jury led to the conviction of a Heath Street member, Lamory Gray, for the murder of an H Street member on Humboldt Avenue in the heart of H Street territory. Jamison refused to testify at Gray's trial, citing the Fifth Amendment, but the prosecutor relied heavily on his grand-jury statements and the judge refused to let Gray's attorney point out that during the grand-jury proceedings Jamison pointed to the wrong person when shown an array of photos of possible suspects.

In 2012, the Supreme Judicial Court threw out the conviction, saying the judge should not have allowed Jamison's grand-jury statements to be used because Gray's attorney had no effective way to try to rebut them through cross examination.

Innocent, etc.