A federal jury awarded $80 million to the estate of a Black man who was wrongly convicted of a 1976 murder in Buffalo, New York, as a teen and imprisoned for 28 years. The jury found that the Erie County District Attorney’s Office withheld exculpatory evidence and engaged in other prosecutoria l misconduct that had denied the man a fair trial. The verdict is believed to be the largest monetary award for a wrongful conviction in U.S. history, according to the plaintiff’s attorneys. (From left to right) Darryl Boyd, his estate’s executor, Kathleen Weppner, his mother, Thomacenia Knight, and John Walker, Jr. celebrated in August 2021 after the New York Supreme Court vacated the 1977 murder convictions of Boyd and Walker. (Photo: WBKW 7 News screenshot) Darryl Boyd was 16 when he and four other Black teenagers who came to be known as the “Buffalo Five” were arrested for the murder of William Crawford, one snowy night on Jan. 2, 1976. The boys, all 16 or 17 years old, were playing cards at an apartment in the Glenny Projects in East Buffalo that night, a party that broke up around 11:30 p.m., ‘You’re Being Nasty!’: Pregnant Pastor Lost Her Baby After Racist Circle K Employee Attacked Her On Video Over Rewards Points, Lawsuit Says Boyd’s civil lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Western New York in 2022, and obtained by Atlanta Black Star, contended. Two of the boys took taxis home, and Boyd and Darryn Gibson decided to walk. Boyd’s path home took him past Crawford’s house sometime before midnight. Also around 11:30 p.m., Crawford, 62, who’d been drinking to excess at the Golden Nugget bar across from his house and had unwisely flashed a wad of $300 cash inside, decided to head out. He was accompanied by a neighbor, Larry Watson, who’d offered to escort the intoxicated man home, multiple witnesses, including a barmaid, later told Buffalo police. Shortly after the two men left, Crawford was beaten and robbed at the side door of his house, where his body was found in a pool of blood. A set of footprints in the snow led through the backyard of the Crawford property towards Watson’s house, the complaint says. Watson returned to the Golden Nugget approximately 20 minutes later and left in a hurry with his wife, without finishing their drinks or saying goodnight to the barmaid, which was uncharacteristic for them, she later told detectives, adding that she believed Watson had murdered Crawford. The all-white jury in Boyd’s 1977 trial for murder and armed robbery never heard about Watson as a viable suspect or the statements of the witnesses in the bar about Watson’s proximity to the crime. Instead, based on a tip from an anonymous caller, detectives focused on Boyd and Gibson, and their three friends, John Walker Jr., Floyd Martin and Tyrone Woodruff. The boys were harshly interrogated for hours without their parents present and, the lawsuit says, coerced and threatened by Buffalo police detectives with life imprisonment unless they implicated one another in the murder. They were each also falsely told that their friends, interviewed separately “upstairs,” had already ratted on them. All initially denied any involvement in or knowledge of the crime, but Woodruff and another teen, Andre Hough, eventually broke and signed statements indicating that they had witnessed the others rush Crawford at the end of his driveway, beat him in the head with a pipe and rob him, then drag him up the driveway to his house. One problem with that account, the complaint says, is that crime scene photos show a pool of blood near Crawford’s house, but no blood on the sidewalk or in his driveway. The photos also showed only one set of footprints, not five, and no drag marks in the snow. But those crime scene photos were not shared with Boyd’s defense attorneys or shown to the jury, a suppression of exculpatory evidence that his attorneys later argued violated his rights to due process and to a fair trial. It took multiple lawyers and advocacy groups working on Boyd’s appeals and other legal tactics over five decades to finally bring the truth to light. In August 2021, Boyd’s conviction was vacated by the state Supreme Court. He was then 62 and had served 20 years in prison for the murder and another eight years for minor parole violations. Walker’s conviction was also vacated. The court found that the prosecution had not disclosed to Boyd’s trial counsel the crime scene photographs that contradicted the prosecution’s theory of the crime presented at trial and which pointed to Crawford’s neighbor Watson as the actual perpetrator, violating Boyd’s constitutional right to a fair trial, the civil lawsuit says. “We went through a tunnel prior to trial, but we’re great now,” Boyd said at the time his conviction was overturned, reported WIVP. “It paid off. I’ll probably go kiss a tree.” The Erie County prosecutor, John Flynn, opted not to retry Boyd and Walker, citing a lack of available evidence, including many witnesses who had since died. He did not agree that the undisclosed evidence that had come to light exonerated the men. Gibson, the third man convicted in the killing, was released from prison in 2008 and died a year later, reported The Associated Press. Martin was acquitted at trial, and Woodruff testified against the others (though later recanted his testimony). Boyd and Walker settled their case against the city of Buffalo for about $4.7 million each. Walker won a $28 million verdict against Erie County earlier this year, which the county has appealed. Boyd died of pancreatic cancer in 2023 while his case against the county proceeded, spearheaded by his mother, son and granddaughter.In recorded testimony played during his two-and-a-half-week trial, Boyd told of how he returned to his cell in shock after he was convicted of murder at age 17, reported the New York Times. He cried as he talked to his mother, he said. Decades of dehumanizing violence followed, including being slashed by someone who wanted his commissary purchases. He saw a friend fatally stabbed over a piece of chicken, and heard and smelled someone get burned alive in a cell. “He lost his whole adult life to this wrongful conviction. The jury heard just how many years he was suffering in maximum security prison. All the terrible things you assume happen in prison, happened in prison,” Ross Firsenbaum, an attorney with WilmerHale, one of three firms representing Boyd’s estate, told the Associated Press. Firsenbaum said being released on parole was just as hard for Boyd, who suffered from PTSD, anxiety, and other ailments. He struggled to keep or get jobs because of the conviction and eventually began self-medicating and developed a substance abuse addiction. Though Boyd died in 2023 before the trial could be held, his mother and son attended the trial every day, Firsenbaum said. “The (county) argued his substance use was the cause of his problems, not the 27 or so years he spent wrongfully in prison,” Firsenbaum said. “And that’s offensive. And the jury recognized that and responded with this verdict.”Boyd’s 83-year-old mother, Thomacenia Knight, told WGRZ after the verdict, “Everything’s working out now. I just miss my son.” In their motion to dismiss the case filed earlier this month, attorneys for Erie County argued that the plaintiff had offered no evidence that then-Assistant District Attorney Timothy Drury had intentionally withheld evidence that pointed to Boyd’s innocence, or that he had committed misconduct so egregious during his summation that it deprived Boyd of a fair trial, as alleged. The jury in the civil trial disagreed, deliberating for less than an hour before finding specifically that Erie prosecutors had failed to disclose exculpatory material in Boyd’s case and also as a longstanding policy, custom or practice in other criminal cases. The jury also marked “yes” on the verdict form to questions asking if Drury had committed summation misconduct, and if Buffalo police had fabricated evidence in a manner that coerced Drury into making uninformed decisions regarding Boyd’s prosecution.Jeffrey S. Gutman, a professor at George Washington University Law School, told the New York Times the $80 million in compensatory damages was “by far, the largest jury award in a wrongful conviction compensation case.” It outstrips the $60 million that two Chicago men were awarded in March. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said last month that Erie County will be appealing the wrongful death verdict, calling it “excessive.” “I feel bad for Mr. Boyd, who’s since passed, but we the people of Erie County have to pay for it,” Poloncarz told reporters. “We don’t have $80 million just sitting around to pay out. Sometimes I think these juries think, ‘Oh, the governments, they have all this money,’ but each and every one of us pays for it in the long run.” ‘Lost His Whole Adult Life’: Family of New York Man Imprisoned As a Teen for 28 years Gets Largest Award for a Wrongful Conviction in U.S. History ...read more read less