FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) — During the nearly three decades he spent behind bars, Michael Sullivan's mother and four siblings died, his girlfriend moved on with her life and he was severely beaten in several prison attacks.
All for a murder that he long insisted he never committed.
Earlier this month, 64-year-old Sullivan received a measure of justice when a Massachusetts jury found him innocent of the 1986 murder and robbery of Wilfred McGrath. He was awarded $13 million, even though state regulations prohibited the reward for wrongful death. convictions limited to one million dollars. The jury also found that a state police chemist gave false testimony at the trial, although his testimony did not guarantee Sullivan's conviction.
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It is the latest in a string of convictions overturned in the state in recent years.
“The most important thing is that I am innocent of the murder and that I am expunging the murder from my record,” Sullivan said, speaking at the office of his lead attorney Michael Heineman in Framingham, Massachusetts. “The money will of course be very useful to me.”
A spokesperson for the Massachusetts attorney general said, “We respect the jury's verdict and will evaluate whether an appeal is appropriate.”
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.
Authorities focused on Sullivan after learning that his sister had been out with McGrath the night before the murder and that the two had gone to the apartment she shared with Sullivan. Another suspect 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 jacket and a hair that matched McGrath, not Sullivan's.
Sullivan was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Grace, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to 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 he died in prison.
“I couldn't believe I was convicted of murder,” Sullivan said, recalling that prosecutors mentioned the purple jacket five times in their closing arguments. “My mother cried in the courtroom, my brother cried. I cried. It was very difficult for me and my family.”
Prison would prove to be a nightmare for Sullivan. In one attack his nose was almost bitten off and in another attack he almost lost an ear. And because he was a zest for life, the prison system would not allow him to take classes to acquire the much-needed skills
“It's very difficult for someone, especially when you know you're innocent,” Sullivan said. “And prison is a bad life, you know. Prison is a hard life.”
But in 2011, Sullivan's fortunes changed dramatically.
Sullivan's lawyer requested a DNA test – which had not been available for the first trial – which found no blood on the jacket. The tests also showed that substances on the jacket did not contain McGrath's DNA and could not determine whether the hair on a jacket was his.
Dana Curhan, a Boston attorney who represented Sullivan from 1992 to 2014 and pushed for DNA testing, said Sullivan had always told him that McGrath's blood was not on the jacket. But he was surprised to learn there was no blood, undermining the prosecution's argument that Sullivan had beaten McGrath into a “blood pulp.”
“At the prosecution's closing, he essentially said, 'Hey, if he wasn't the one who did it, why did they find blood on both cuffs of the jacket?'” Curhan said. “He kept repeating that. We have no blood or a DNA match. You would expect someone who does what he allegedly did to be covered in blood. There is no blood. That really was true.”
A retrial was ordered in 2012 and Sullivan was released in 2013. He spent the first six months in house arrest and had to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for years.
“When I walked out the front door, I was in an emotional state,” he said.
In 2014, the Supreme Court upheld a 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 virtually impossible for her office to successfully retry the case against Sullivan, given the deaths of some witnesses and a diminution in the memories of other potential witnesses.
Sullivan admits that he withdrew after he was released and that to this day he struggles to function in a world that changed dramatically while he was in prison. Before he was arrested, he had worked at a peanut factory and 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 employment. He still cannot use a computer and mainly helps his sister with chores. His girlfriend, whom he had known since he was 12, would visit him in prison for 10 years, but ultimately “he had to move on with her life.”
“I'm still not really adjusted to the outside world,” Sullivan said, adding that he spends much of his time with his Yorkshire terrier Buddy and pigeons he keeps at his sister's home.
“It's hard for me,” he said. “I'm not going anywhere. I'm scared all the time…I'm pretty much a loner.”
Sullivan's sister, Donna Faria, said the family did not believe for “a minute” that he had killed McGrath. They were in support of the trial, speaking with Sullivan twice a week while he was in prison and visiting him every few months.
But Faria laments all that Sullivan lost in prison, noting that he “never had children and never got married like the rest of us.”
“If he hadn't had me, my brother would have been walking the streets like a lot of homeless people,” Faria said. 'It's almost like he doesn't trust people. When he is with his family, he feels safe. If he isn't, he won't.”
Today, Sullivan spends most of his time at Faria's home in Billerica, Massachusetts, and often does her family's laundry, as he did for fellow inmates when he was in prison. Despite the jury prize, Sullivan does not expect his life to change that much.
Sullivan will treat himself to a new truck, but said he wants to save most of the money to make sure his nieces and nephews have what they need when they turn 21. Sullivan has not received therapy for the hardships he endured, but his attorney, Heineman, said he plans to ask the court, as part of the sentence, to provide him with therapy and educational services.
“They'll have money. That will make me very happy,” he said. “The most important thing is that my nieces and nephews take care of them.”
