James Watson’s Murder Conviction Overturned
After Serving 40 Years for a Crime He Did Not Commit
BOSTON – November 11, 2020 – Boston-native, James J. Watson, the second man convicted for the 1979 murder of Boston cab driver, Jeffrey Boyajian, had his conviction overturned on November 5, 2020. Having served almost forty-one (41) years for a crime he did not commit, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office dismissed all charges against him on November 10, 2020. Three years earlier, after serving thirty-eight years for a crime he did not commit, Watson’s co-defendant Frederick Clay was exonerated as well.
Though serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, Watson was released in April 2020 due to the strength of his wrongful conviction claims and the danger he faced in prison due to his age and medical conditions. On November 5, 2020, a Suffolk County Superior Court Judge overturned Watson’s conviction after allowing his motion that raised concerns about prosecutorial and police misconduct, incentivized and coerced witnesses, hypnosis-induced misidentifications, ineffective assistance of counsel, and the absence of his DNA on any items connected with the murder.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office assented to Watson’s Motion for New Trial and dismissed all charges. In doing so, District Attorney Rachael Rollins noted: “Upon review of the evidence, including that advanced by the defendant in his motion and that gathered by the Commonwealth after receiving the motion, and after extensive investigation and scrutiny by this office’s Integrity Review Bureau, the Commonwealth has concluded that the interests of justice would not be served by the prosecution of this case.”
Attorney Barbara Munro, Watson’s counsel appointed by the Committee for Public Counsel Services Innocence Program, explained, “The greatest injustice is to take an innocent man away from his son and family. This could have been prevented here if the then-prosecutor had not withheld from the defense the fact that the eyewitnesses were hypnotized prior to their identifications of Mr. Watson, rendering them unreliable.” In addition to the unreliable eyewitness evidence, other witnesses were given incentives to testify against Watson, including promises of new apartments in public housing and threats that their children would be taken.
Co-counsel, Attorney Madeline Blanchette noted, “It is impossible to undo the intergenerational trauma that this wrongful conviction inflicted on Mr. Watson and his family, but his exoneration now means that there is still opportunity for healing.” At yesterday’s celebration, Watson’s son, Don, who was fifteen-months old when his father went to prison, told Blanchette and Munro, “All that matters to me is I get to comfort my dad now and do things with my dad now.”
Along with Munro and Blanchette, Mr. Watson’s case was supported by other groups as well. The New England Innocence Project funded investigation into Mr. Watson’s wrongful conviction. Nardizzi & Associates Inc. conducted critical and extensive investigation into the forty-one-year-old case. Kristin Dame, the Director of Private Social Work Services at CPCS, provided critical reentry support services to Mr. Watson. Dr. Mary Bassett, The Sentencing
Project, and Katharine Naples-Mitchell of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Watson’s April 2020 request to be released.