2020: Retrial Motion for 1995 Firearms Convictions
In December 2020, Sean’s attorney, Rosemary Scapicchio, filed a retrial motion related to his 1995 firearms convictions. The motion was based on the corrupt conduct (affirmed by two courts) of three investigators of the 1993 murder of Det. John Mulligan: former BPD detectives Kenneth Acerra, Walter Robinson, and John Brazil. The men were not only station-house colleagues and friends of the victim, but also partners in a criminal scheme of robberies with him. The 2020 retrial motion alleged that these three investigators tainted the gun evidence used against Ellis.
SEAN ELLIS, 2021 Photo via www.trialfour.com
Background
While it took three trials in 1995 for Suffolk County prosecutors to convict Sean Ellis of murder and robbery (convictions that were overturned in 2015, see below), in his first trial, Sean was convicted of unlawful possession of two firearms related to the case.
Five months after Sean’s September 1995 conviction for Det. Mulligan’s murder and robbery, three Mulligan task force investigators, Dets. Acerra, Robinson, and Brazil, were exposed by the Boston Globe Spotlight Team as having run a longstanding criminal scheme of falsifying search warrants and robbing drug dealers and illegal immigrants in the Boston area. ( Zuckoff, Mitchell, “Corruption probe shakes up Boston detective unit: Officers are disciplined in drug-raid inquiries,” Boston Globe, February 10, 1996, p. 1).
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and from Boston Police Dept. Internal Affairs (via court order), revealed that victim John Mulligan participated in Acerra, Robinson, and Brazil’s drug dealer robberies.
Specifics: Federal grand jury testimony unearthed by attorney Scapicchio and her team showed that victim John Mulligan robbed Boston drug dealer Robert Martin with Acerra and Robinson just 17 days before his own murder. Additionally, BPD Internal Affairs records released by court order in 2014 revealed that in the year of his death, Mulligan was under active investigation for two drug robberies he allegedly perpetrated in 1991 in Boston’s Brighton section with former detective Walter Robinson.
Largely as a result of these findings, Sean’s convictions for Det. Mulligan’s murder and robbery were overturned in 2015 based on the bias of the investigating detectives, who collected most all the evidence used against Sean.
(See: 2015: Overturned convictions and release)
The 2015 ruling overturning Sean’s murder and robbery convictions (by now-retired Judge Carol S. Ball) was unanimously affirmed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) in September 2016. At the 2016 SJC hearing, Chief Justice Ralph Gants (now deceased) called the new evidence of Mulligan’s criminal participation with Acerra and Robinson – who went on to serve as investigators of his murder – ”a game changer.”
(See: 2016: SJC hearing and ruling).
In the SJC’s 2016 ruling, Chief Justice Gants stated:
“We did not know [in 2000] that [Detectives Acerra, Robinson, and Brazil] had been engaged with [victim John Mulligan] in criminal acts of police misconduct as recently as seventeen days before the victim’s murder. The complicity of the victim in the detectives’ malfeasance fundamentally changes the significance of the detectives’ corruption with respect to their investigation of the victim’s murder ...
[T]hese detectives would likely fear that a prolonged and comprehensive investigation of the victim’s murder would uncover leads that might reveal their own criminal corruption. They, therefore, had a powerful incentive to prevent a prolonged or comprehensive investigation, and to discourage or thwart any investigation of leads that might reveal the victim’s corrupt acts.”
Photo via www.trialfour.com
2021: RETRIAL MOTION AFFIRMED BY THE COMMONWEALTH
On March 17, 2021, D.A. Rachael Rollins affirmed Sean Ellis’s retrial motion on his gun convictions. The importance of this cannot be overstated: Rollins became the first Boston official to publicly acknowledge what two courts have affirmed: significant corruption marred the Mulligan investigation from start to finish, and exculpatory evidence was withheld from Sean’s trial lawyers - information that would have made a difference to the jury.
Until now, both the BPD and Suffolk County prosecutors have denied malfeasance in Sean’s case. (see 2018: Charges Dropped) D.A. Rollins characterized Boston detectives’ corruption and prosecutors’ withholding of evidence in Sean’s case as “disgraceful chapters in our history.”
See: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2021/03/17/rachael-rollins-new-trial-sean-ellis
In her filing, Rollins wrote:
“Corruption at the root tainted every branch of the investigation into Detective Mulligan’s murder, including the gun possession charges.”
SUFFOLK COUNTY DA RACHAEL ROLLINS Photo via suffolkdistrictattorney.com
“RachAel Rollins has taken the brave position of understanding and acknowledging the corruption and acknowledging the effect it had on Sean’s trial and his right to a fair trial.
“And in doing so, she’s acknowledged that there was a problem and that it needs to be fixed. And this is what reform looks like.
“This is what a progressive DA looks like.”
ATTORNEY ROSEMARY SCAPICCHIO