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As DA moves to drop last charge against Sean Ellis, BPD acknowledges corrupt detectives, but still says Ellis was guilty of something, so no apology to him
By adamg on Wed, 03/17/2021 - 2:45pm
WGBH reports that Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins will move for a new trial for Sean Ellis, once charged with murdering a BPD detective asleep on a detail and that if her request is granted, she will then move to drop the sole remaining charge against him - for illegal possession of a firearm.
Ellis spent 22 years in prison on a murder conviction for the shooting death of Det. John Mulligan in a Roslindale parking lot in 1993. He was released in 2015 after his attorney found evidence that implicated three other BPD detectives in a possible plot to kill Mulligan to keep him quiet about the way they were making money by framing drug dealers.
The next year, the state Supreme Judicial Court ordered a new trial for Ellis, but in 2018, acting DA John Pappas dropped the murder charge because of the passage of time and because the other detective's alleged corruption would make it difficult to make a case against Ellis.
In a statement today, Boston Police Superintendent Gregory Long says it really sucks some of BPD's own were particularly corrupt, not because they sent a man to prison for a crime he didn't commit, but because it made the department look bad.
The Boston Police Department does not and will not tolerate corruption. Every day the members of the Boston Police Department proudly wear their uniform to serve and protect the people of the city. In this case, the actions of a few have significantly impacted the image of the countless members of the Boston Police Department who worked tirelessly, honestly and honorably to bring justice to the Mulligan family. As Justice Carol Ball stated in her 2015 decision granting the defendant a new trial, “…the conclusions reached here should not be read as an indictment of the many honest and honorable Boston Police officers who worked on the Mulligan murder investigation. Moreover, twenty years after these events, this judge is acutely aware of the strides made by the Boston Police Department in the professional handling of the investigation and prosecution of their cases. This is particularly true of the Homicide Department, which is deservedly held in particularly high regard by this judge.”
Long, whose statement does not even mention Ellis by name, closes by writing:
The Department wants to acknowledge the continued pain and suffering of the Mulligan family. Our support for them has never wavered.
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Comments
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you’d think whoever does their PR would be sick of writing this sentence by now
Hmm
Maybe we're looking at this backwards and the writer is referring to the few clean cops as explanation for why a chunk of the population still holds the police in high regard.
That's a bit unfair
I'd say most cops are clean but do a terrible job holding their peers to any accountability.
Complicit
If you witness corruption and don't stop it, you are part of the corruption!
Edit: Every decently run company has a reporting requirement for its employees. But if we asked the same of the police, they would probably demand a 40% raise.
Change Evans to Rollins
unless we have a new DA in Suffolk County.
Thanks
Fixed.
but still
The GF's prints were on the gun. Ellis had no real account of why he and Patterson parked on that side street. A biased documentary that left out a ton of shit is not the basis of justice. I sincerely hope the city fights any lawsuit.
OK, so you think he's still guilty of gun possession ...
Then the question is: Is 22 years a normal sentence for illegal gun possession?
he did not just get those guns
he was most certainly a participant in the murder.
you didn’t answer the question
...
Maybe he did
After all, OJ Simpson got 33 years for kidnapping and armed robbery.
Yeah but
OJ never got to sue Los Angeles PD after he was found not guilty. While people rejoiced that he had been liberated from those evil people that sought to frame him, OJ never got to sue the city.
However, in this case Ellis will get to sue the city. Also unlike OJ he will not be a pariah, but instead he will be in demand to speak at events. All because some biased documentary and people wanting to see something that is not there. The fact of the matter is he was a participant in a murder.
What is stopping OJ from
What is stopping OJ from hiring a lawyer, or filing a pro se suit?
Karma
I personally new officer mulligan and to my knowledge Sean Ellis was a scapegoat for what really happened I will say no more. Code of silence!!!
I don't think you know what "karma" means
Well, "Timmy", "karma" simply means that your actions have consequences, and by your "code of silence" you are doing your part to prevent those consequences from happening. If you actually had knowledge that would exonerate Ellis, you should be ashamed of yourself for your part in this.
If so, it's a damn shame
If so, it's a damn shame those who represent us in our courts will be unable to ever prove that beyond our legal criminal standards, because of the actions of these corrupt cops. Without that proof, we must extend to him the presumption of innocence for those crimes.
Murder is reprehensible. Causing irreparable harm to the criminal process by manipulating the investigation of a murder, preventing justice from ever being served, is also reprehensible.
The Trial 4 documentary is
The Trial 4 documentary is the most mesmerizing contemporary Boston story I've heard, and I have been tuning in for a while. I have no close connection to anyone involved but I can’t believe how little press this documentary has received since its release.
Although Sean Ellis wasn’t killed in the process, I see this case as more scandalous than many of the recent high-profile shootings of black men. This wasn’t 5 seconds -or 9 minutes- of bad judgment from some prejudiced, impulsive trigger-happy cop; it’s nearly 3 decades of cover up by an entire police department, DA office and the politicians who've put them into place. They've all refused to reexamine the coerced testimonies, stolen and blatantly fabricated evidence and lies that sent this man to jail for 22 years just so they wouldn't have to lift the lid on all the cr.p that's been festering for so long.
Today's statement by Boston Police Superintendent Gregory Long makes it very clear. BPD; we know where you stand.
DA Rollins is not turning her back to this, it gives me a glimmer of hope.
except they leave out
the story behind how the guns got from the GF's apartment to the field, and the two witnesses who testified to the grand jury about that... or the story of how the co-defendant Patterson was going to take a deal and testify against Ellis...
then there is that whole thing about how they interviewed one of the homicide detectives but chose not to use the footage because it was too damning, so instead they chose to list him as having declined to participate...
I don't remember all the
I don't remember all the details as I watched the documentary a few months ago, but one thing I do remember well is that the first investigators showing up on the scene were were drug detectives, not murder detectives. As soon as they arrived on the crime scene, they started rearranging things around before pictures got taken -likely so that it wouldn't show that Mulligan was getting a b-job in his car from a teenager while he was "working" his detail job. These drug detectives were later found guilty of routinely stealing drugs from drug dealers and planting them in some other kid's home so that they could raid it and steal all the valuables out of it. They were doing that over and over. And you are saying we should trust these guys for not planting evidences? Also it is well established that the cops paid some of the "witnesses" a good amount to testify, I don't know that the documentary producers did that.
Mulligan was one of these rotten to the core detectives and in cahoots with the two mentioned earlier. Of course they didn't want for the truth to come out. He was likely killed as a retaliation by one of the countless enemies he'd made to himself. BPD calls him a hero.
The Fence
You should read The Fence. Trial 4 reminded me of that incident and I came across the book when I searched for Michael Cox.
BPD Rodney-Kinged one of their own back then and put up the blue wall of silence. Nobody saw anything. He probably would have been killed if they didn't finally recognize him as a cop.
So was O-Fish banned or did Covid get him?
This is the kind of article he would have polluted previously... Good riddance either way.
Speaking of BPD, can Janey appoint a new chief when Marty leaves or is she stuck with the guy currently on leave?
O-Fish
doesn't exist. After the insurrection the MAGA yup who purports to be a policeman got tired of playing blueface.
I seem to recall that Fishy got banned
after one too many misinformation posts.
or
that!
Wow, I missed that.
Time to do a search on all Universal Hub comments?
The Mullligan Monument
The city removes the monument to Abraham Lincoln but leaves up the monument to a corrupt cop.
Is there physical monument to
Is there a physical monument to Mulligan?
There is a monument...
Right in front of area E-5... I try to get my dog to piss on it when I walk her by the station but she even she is too disgusted by the memorial dedicated to Mulligan to consider it.
Hmmmm
So how come, in a huge organization devoted specifically to investigating and rooting out crime, they let this corruption last for such a long time? Something doesn't quite add up here.
"We don't tolerate corruption ...
we encourage it!"
We can believe two things at once.
We can believe that the investigation was flawed and irreparably tainted by the involvement of disgraced cops.
We can also believe that testimony from his uncle and girlfriend, as well as his connection to the murder weapon and the scene, is a reasonable basis upon which to believe he was involved in the murder of Mulligan.
Why is this so hard for people to grok?
Ellis’ attorney made a good argument and justice was served because the constitution demands it. But there’s a huge gap between criminal liability and saying he was completely innocent and not involved.
Fake news and group think is super fucking dangerous. Use your minds. Don’t be like the Qanon idiots who stormed the Capitol because they are incapable of processing facts.
Well, at the end of the day,
Well, at the end of the day, noboby involved in this case comes away looking good.