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 prosecutorial 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.
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…