After 26 years behind bars, James Lucien walked out of court a free man Tuesday. No thanks to John Brazil, the notoriously corrupt Boston police detective who sent him away for murder and armed robbery.
Lucien was freed by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Robert Ullmann, after a reexamination of the case by the Suffolk district attorney’s office uncovered a deeply flawed investigation.
Lucien was convicted of killing Ryan Edwards during a drug deal that went sour. He walked free because his prosecution was rotten at its core.
The lead detective, Brazil, had one of the best-documented careers of corruption in the history of the department, and probably perjured himself in this case.
Another investigator in the case, George Foley, had recently suffered an alcohol-related breakdown so severe that he probably shouldn’t have been investigating cases at all; a high-ranking officer had described him as “unable to differentiate between fact and fiction.”
In Lucien’s case, evidence had likely been tampered with, a feature of many Brazil cases. The money and beeper held as evidence didn’t match crime scene photos. The clothing of the victim — who was shot at point-blank range — was never tested for gunpowder, which is standard procedure.
The jury that convicted Lucien — who, as you probably surmised by now, is Black — was told none of this.
So he went to prison, where he would remain for all these years, doing time for a crime he had firmly insisted he never committed.
Lucien’s case, on its own merits, is an outrage. But it fits neatly into Brazil’s career.
He was an alleged star investigator in the 1980s and early 1990s, a figure in many important cases, especially drug-related cases. He often worked those cases with Detectives Kenny Acerra and Walter Robinson.
But as a Globe Spotlight Team investigation uncovered, many of the convictions they won were dubious. Witnesses were manipulated and coerced. Evidence was sketchy. And, with some frequency, the cash from their drug busts didn’t add up.
They weren’t just busting low-level drug dealers and helping themselves to some of the cash they found lying around — though, they were, in fact, doing that, as Brazil would later admit under oath.
Their serious and serial misconduct destroyed lives. They figured prominently in the murder conviction of Sean K. Ellis, who served 22 years for the killing of Detective John Mulligan before being exonerated.
How corrupt was Brazil? So corrupt that he ultimately testified under immunity in federal court in a case involving Robinson and Acerra, publicly admitting to years of misdeeds.
Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins pushed to clear the Ellis case after sweeping misconduct came to light. And to her credit, she was no less forceful in exonerating Lucien, who was freed through the work of her office’s Integrity Review Bureau.
“With all of this infection and cancer and rot, can I put my name on anything upholding what happened in these cases?” Rollins said last month. “You are presumed innocent until we give you a fair trial. And if we don’t give you a fair trial, I can’t stand up and defend that conviction. I just can’t.”
As he made clear, Judge Ullmann was also unwilling to overlook the manifest misconduct in his case.
“If I was convinced in any way that James Lucien fired the fatal shot, this would be an easy decision for me to deny the motion,” Ullmann said from the bench as he dismissed murder and armed robbery charges against Lucien. “But it’s clear to me justice may not have been done.”
The family of Ryan Edwards, the victim, is not happy about the overturning of Lucien’s conviction. Relatives of the deceased often aren’t.
Ullmann addressed them as well, explaining that their frustration shouldn’t be directed at prosecutors. “The person to blame is the lead detective in this case, Detective Brazil. If he had been honest and had done his job correctly, we would not be here.”
Brazil has been retired for years, on disability. But his legacy lives on — in the cases of wrongfully convicted prisoners being set free. And, perhaps, in the continued imprisonment of others less fortunate, those whose mistreatment has not yet gained notice.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at adrian.walker@globe.com. Follow him @Adrian_Walker.