$11 Million Paid by Boston to Exonerated Prisoner for 37-Year Wrongful Incarceration
by Chuck Sharman
The City of Boston paid $11 million to settle federal civil rights claims filed by former state prisoner Joseph Jabir Pope, after he was exonerated in 2022 of a murder conviction for which he spent 37 years in prison. The August 2025 settlement only came to light in May 2026, after the Boston Globe obtained a copy of the agreement in a public records request.
Pope was a 30-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran in May 1984, when he went to the “triple-decker” house where Benny DeJesus lived in the Dorchester neighborhood on the city’s southside. DeJesus was a cocaine distributor, for whom Pope had sometimes dealt; that night, he carried along a friend, Albert Brown, to make an introduction because Brown wanted in on DeJesus’ operation.
DeJesus sought to speak privately with Pope about his friend in the second-floor “drug room” where they met, so he sent Brown to the first floor with his brother, Efrain DeJesus, 26. There, two men entered the home and fatally shot the younger DeJesus with a shotgun. Brown fled, dropping his wallet on the way out. Upstairs, Pope and the other brother heard the commotion and peered down to find the victim lying in a pool of blood. Benny DeJesus quickly began scattering evidence of his drug operation, ordering Pope to leave when he refused to help. DeJesus then called 911.
Assistant District Attorney Robert Goodale worked the crime scene, memorializing interviews with responding cops and the other parties involved in a memorandum. In addition to Brown’s wallet, he wrote, Boston Police Department (BPD) Det. Robert Flynn seized 10 packets of suspected cocaine at the scene, and Det. Peter J. O’Malley was told by DeJesus that Pope was downstairs with Brown and his brother during the shooting. DeJesus also told cops that he and his brother were being robbed by Pope and Brown. But based on his interview with O’Malley, Goodale wrote that he believed DeJesus’ was lying to cover up his cocaine operation.
When cops caught up with Brown the next day, he said that he fled the house when two armed men entered, identifying them as Ricky Tisdale and Ricky Vale. But it was Brown whom police charged with pulling the trigger, arresting Pope on a felony murder charge for his alleged involvement in the robbery that DeJesus reported. No physical evidence tied Pope to the murder, just the testimony of DeJesus—which shifted in material ways from what he told cops the night of the killing; Pope was now reported to be upstairs during the shooting. Two other cops, BPD Det. James Curran and Off. William Baker, testified that no drugs were found at the scene, contradicting Det. Flynn’s discovery, but supporting DeJesus’ robbery story.
Jurors never heard about these inconsistencies, though, nor did they ever review Goodale’s memo; those pieces of evidence were never given to defense attorneys for Pope or Brown. They were convicted in 1986, Brown of murder and Pope of felony murder. Both convictions were upheld on direct appeal. Both went to state prisons, where Pope was still serving his sentence when the state Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) narrowed the felony murder rule in 2017 to require “actual” rather than “constructive” malice. Though the ruling was not made retroactive, Pope’s attorneys began preparing a motion for a new trial and requested his decades-old case file. There, all the pieces of evidence were found that jurors never heard.
Exoneration and Payout
A new trial motion was filed, which the trial court denied in 2021, finding insufficient evidence that Goodale’s memo was never disclosed to Pope’s defense attorney (who was dead by then). But the SJC disagreed and reversed on appeal, vacating his conviction in 2022. By then, he was already out of prison, having been granted medical release by the SJC during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Prosecutors successfully moved the trial court to dismiss the charges against him in late 2022. Based on the SJC ruling in Pope’s appeal, the trial court also vacated Brown’s conviction; he was released in 2022 at age 71, and charges against him were dropped the same year.
Pope filed a successful claim for $500,000 from the state’s wrongful conviction fund in 2023. The following year, with the aid of attorneys from Godwin Proctor LLP in Boston and the Law Office of Jeffrey G. Harris in West Newton, Pope filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, accusing the BPD cops of suppressing exculpatory evidence that they were bound to disclose under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). Pointing to a series of similar exonerations, Pope also sought to hold the BPD and the City liable for maintaining a de facto custom of tolerating such civil rights violations, as permitted under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Svcs. of the City of N.Y., 436 U.S. 658 (1978).
The City moved to dismiss the Monell claim. But the district court denied the motion on November 7, 2024. See: Pope v. City of Bos., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 202929 (D. Mass.). The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, with a payout that included costs and fees for Pope’s attorneys. See: Pope v. City of Bos., USDC (D. Mass.), Case No. 1:24-cv-10980.
Pope admitted to the Boston Globe at his 2022 release that he had a different perspective from many other exonerees, since he was on the lam after an escape from a prison sentence at the time he was accused of DeJesus’ killing. “Innocent prisoners generally do time differently than guilty prisoners,” he said. “Those that are guilty tend to resolve themselves to their fate and on some level even find relief. With innocent prisoners, there’s a hunger and rage that accompanies us on a regular basis.”
Brown, who is also known as Floyd Hamilton—the name on the drivers license in the wallet he left behind at the scene of DeJesus’ killing—also filed suit in the district court against the City and BPD personnel. Again, the City moved to dismiss, and again the district court largely denied the motion on August 21, 2025. See: Hamilton v. City of Bos., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 162507 (D. Mass.). The case remains pending, and PLN will update developments as they unfold. Brown is represented by attorneys with Corso Law in Rehoboth. See: Brown v. City of Bos., USDC (D. Mass.), Case No. 1:24-12687.
Additional source: Boston Globe
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login