FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) – During the nearly 30 years he was in prison, Michael Sullivan’s mother and four of his siblings died, his girlfriend moved on with her life and he was severely beaten in multiple prison attacks.
All the murders where he lived he said he never committed.
Earlier this month, 64-year-old Sullivan received a degree of justice when a Massachusetts jury found him not guilty of the 1986 murder and robbery of Wilfred McGrath. He was awarded $13 million – even though state laws cap awards at $1 million for wrongful convictions. The jury also found a state chemist to have lied at trial even though his false testimony proved Sullivan guilty.
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It is the latest overturned conviction in the county in recent years.
“The most important thing is to get me not guilty of murder, getting them off my record,” Sullivan said, speaking at the Framingham, Massachusetts, office of his attorney, Michael Heineman. “The money, of course, will help me a lot.”
A spokesman for the Massachusetts attorney general said, “We respect the court’s decision and are evaluating whether an appeal is warranted.”
Sullivan was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 after police said McGrath was robbed and beaten and his body dumped behind an abandoned supermarket.
The authorities intervened on Sullivan after they learned that his sister had gone out with McGrath the night before the murder and the two went to the apartment where he lived with Sullivan. Another accused in the murder, Gary Grace, implicated Sullivan and had his murder charges dropped. Grace testified at trial that Sullivan was wearing a purple jacket the night of the murder and a former State Police chemist testified that he found blood on the coat and hair that matched McGrath’s, not Sullivan’s.
Sullivan was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Meanwhile, Grace pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the murder, and was sentenced to six years. Emil Petrla, who beat McGrath and helped dispose of his body, pleaded guilty to second degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole but later died in prison.
“I didn’t believe I was guilty of murder,” Sullivan said, recalling that prosecutors mentioned the purple jacket five times in their closing arguments. “My mother was crying in court, my brother was crying. I was crying. It was very difficult for me and my family.”
Prison would prove to be the horror of Sullivan. He had to have his nose taken off in one attack and nearly cut off his ear in another. And because he didn’t have the rest of his life, the prison system didn’t allow him to take any classes to get the much needed skills.
“It’s very difficult, especially when you know you’re innocent,” said Sullivan. “And prison life is bad, you know. Prison life is hard.”
But in 2011, Sullivan’s fortunes changed dramatically.
Sullivan’s lawyer requested a DNA test – which was not available for the first test – which found no blood on the coat. The testing also found items on the jacket that did not contain McGrath’s DNA and could not determine if the hair found on the jacket was his.
Dana Curhan, a Boston attorney who represented Sullivan from 1992 to 2014 and advocated for DNA testing, said Sullivan always told him that McGrath’s blood was not on the jacket. But he was surprised to learn that there wasn’t any blood, which undermined the prosecution’s argument that Sullivan had beaten McGrath “in the blood.”
“At the prosecutor’s closing, he said, ‘Hey, if he didn’t do it, why did they find blood on the cuffs of his jacket?'” Curhan said. “He kept repeating that. Now, we don’t have any blood or DNA matches. You would expect someone who does what he’s alleged to have done to be covered in blood. There’s no blood. That’s what it was like.”
A new trial was ordered in 2012 and Sullivan was released in 2013. He spent the first six months under house arrest and had to wear an electronic monitoring belt for years.
“When I left the front door, I was in a state of mind,” he said.
In 2014, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld the decision to grant Sullivan a new trial and, in 2019, the state decided not to retry the case. At the time, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said it was impossible for her office to successfully prosecute Sullivan’s case with the deaths of other witnesses, and the deteriorating memory of other potential witnesses.
Sullivan admits that he “shut down” after his release and, to this day, struggles to function in a world that has changed dramatically while in prison. Before his arrest, he had worked at a peanut factory and had planned to go to school to become a truck driver and eventually work for his brother who owned a trucking company.
Instead, he left prison with no job prospects and little hope of finding a job. He is not yet able to use a computer and mostly helps his sister with odd jobs. His girlfriend, whom he had known since she was 12 years old, would visit him for 10 years in prison but in the end he “had to move on with his life.”
“I’m still getting used to the outside world,” Sullivan said, adding that he spends most of his time with his Yorkshire horse Buddy and the pigeons he keeps at his sister’s house.
“It’s hard for me,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m always afraid … I’m very lonely.”
Sullivan’s sister, Donna Faria, said the family “never for a minute” believed he killed McGrath. They were at the trial in support and spoke to Sullivan twice a week while he was in prison and visited him every few months.
But Faria laments all that Sullivan lost while in prison, saying “he never had children, never married like the rest of us.”
“If it wasn’t for me, my brother would be walking on the streets like many homeless people,” said Faria. “He doesn’t trust people. When he is among his family, he feels safe. If he isn’t, he won’t.
These days, Sullivan spends most of his time at Faria’s home in Billerica, Massachusetts, and often does his family’s laundry as he does for other inmates at the prison. Despite the jury’s award, Sullivan doesn’t expect his life to change much.
Sullivan will treat himself to a new truck but said he wants to save most of the money so that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren can have what they need when they turn 21. Sullivan is not getting medicine for the ordeal he endured but his lawyer Heineman is. he said he plans to ask the court, as part of the sentence, to provide him with treatment and educational services.
“They have money. This will make me very happy,” he said. “The most important thing is my sister and grandchildren – taking care of them.”