Boston agreed to pay $12 million to Shaun Jenkins, a Dorchester man who spent nearly 19 years behind bars for a 2001 killing he has always said he did not commit. The settlement was reached in October 2024 but stayed under the radar until it surfaced in public records and recent reporting. Jenkins walked out of prison after a judge in 2021 tossed his 2005 murder conviction following revelations of police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Settlement Revealed By Public Records
According to The Boston Globe, the city signed off on the $12 million payout in October 2024. Jenkins’s attorneys, Nick Brustin and Katie McCarthy, told the paper that the size of the deal shows Boston understood the gamble of taking the case to a jury. “The City’s settlement demonstrates it knew it faced much greater liability if the case went to trial,” they said, as quoted by the Globe. Spokespeople for Mayor Michelle Wu and the Boston Police Department did not respond to the Globe’s requests for comment.
How Jenkins’ Conviction Unraveled
Jenkins was convicted in 2005 and spent almost two decades in prison before newly surfaced records convinced a judge to grant him a new trial, prompting prosecutors to drop the indictment. In 2023, he filed a federal civil rights complaint that names several Boston detectives and accuses them of paying witnesses and concealing evidence that could have steered investigators toward another suspect. That timeline, along with the detailed allegations, is laid out in reporting and court filings reviewed by WBUR.
What The Files Showed
Documents obtained in connection with the settlement, as reported by The Boston Globe, indicate that Detective Sergeant Daniel Keeler paid at least one reluctant witness $100 the day before that person testified to a grand jury. The records also show that prosecutors failed to turn over cellphone logs revealing the victim had been in repeated contact with a drug supplier on the day of the murder…