NEIP Executive Director, Radha Natarajan, alongside co-counsel Charlotte Whitmore of the Boston College Innocence Program, were recognized by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly as 2023 Lawyers of the Year for their work representing Mr. Thomas Rosa, an innocent man whose murder conviction was overturned last year based on new DNA and eyewitness identification evidence.

In his September 2023 decision overturning the wrongful conviction, Judge Ricciuti found that the new DNA evidence “debunks the prosecution’s closing statement” and “casts doubt regarding the reliability of the eyewitness testimony” in a case where the evidence against Mr. Rosa was "far from overwhelming" to begin with.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office must now decide whether to dismiss the charges against Mr. Rosa or proceed with a fourth trial. Despite a court order requiring the Commonwealth to preserve the physical evidence in the case, the Commonwealth lost the murder weapon as well as other evidence from the crime scene.

Commenting on the state of the case today, Radha Natarajan stated, “I would hope that no prosecutor would bring a murder case today on the evidence or the lack of evidence that exists in this case.”

The New England Innocence Project, alongside Attorney Mark Loevy-Reyes, continues to represent Mr. Rosa in Suffolk Superior Court until this wrongful conviction nightmare, which has now spanned nearly 4 decades, is over.