Hey there, everybody. It is Sunday, December seventh, and one of the largest monetary awards ever given for a wrongful conviction case happened in the United States just in the past few weeks and it was awarded unfortunately posthumously. Is justice still served if it served after death, that's a question. But eighty million dollars was awarded to the estate of Daryl Boyd. That's not necessarily a household name, Babe Daryld Boyd, but he was one of the Buffalo Five.
And even that, I think a lot of people might not know that name, that story, that history of what happened with his story. But we mentioned this Darl Boyd, and yes, welcome everybody to this episode of Amy and TJ. This has been a story. I don't know what This is a question of justice. What does justice look like? A life was taken from this man who ended up on hard times and he should not be dead right now, by all accounts, by bost accounts these days, was still
a young man. This is a weird, weird Yes, I'm gonna go with that weird story where we have a conflict of what justice looks like. How do you make amends? This is a guy who finally got what he's been fighting for but never saw it ultimately come to pass.
He fought for it for every last moment of his life. And perhaps maybe the silver lining was it was a sweet moment to know that his family members were there in the trial for every single day as his proxy. His mother and his son attended this trial. We were talking about Darryl Boyd, one of the Buffalo Five, And if you don't know who the Buffalo Five was, I was not familiar with this case.
I had to look it up.
But these were at the time, five black young men boys who were wrongfully accused back in nineteen seventy six of robbing and killing a sixty two year old white man named William Crawford inside his home. So Daryl Boyd was among this group of young men who were wrongfully accused. And if you look and see what happened to Daryl Boyd back in nineteen seventy six, he had a two and a half week trial and the jury took just one hour to convict him, and he spent decades in prison.
He was eventually released in nineteen ninety nine, but his conviction wasn't vacated until twenty twenty one. And the really, really, really sad part of this story is he didn't live to see justice. He didn't live to see that verdict where he was not only exonerated but compensated by eighty million dollars that is one of the largest decisions ever or basically financial.
They don't, they argue, his attorneys say, this is the Some will tell you this is the largest ever award given to someone who is wrong with.
Wrong, correct, correct, And so this is a huge historic case and it's only well, there's a lot of reasons why this is a sad story with maybe somewhat of a happy ending, but it's just so sad that he died of pancreatic cancer. He died in February of this past year, February twenty six, twenty twenty five, while he was fighting to clear his name and to get some sort of justice. And and I love though, I love it his mother and that his son were there every single day of that trial.
How old was he? These were young guys.
They were teenagers when this was happening, was teenagers when they were wrongfully convicted.
Fifty years ago. So these were still guys in their early sixties for the most part, right early mid sixties, and out of the Buffalo five is there, there's one or two left, so I have that right. And this is kind of a complicated story to a certain degree, but these guys really did because of what happened, they fell on some really hard times even though they finally got these convictions and don't have it right. Robes. The state essentially wants to continue to point out convictions were vacated.
They were never exonerated in court. No one in court ever said you're not guilty. No one ever threw out in that way in saying you didn't do that. They still tried to hold onto way and they were still fighting for I guess actual exoneration. Don't have that right, don't.
We see this all the time though, because the state, the prosecutors. There's a lot of reasons why people don't want to admit to any sort of prosecutorial misconduct. Namely it's probably.
Ego but just that we got it wrong.
Yeah, no one wants to admit that from a political or just egotistical standpoint, but also from a financial one as well, because once you admit that someone did something wrong to another Yeah, there is a financial repercussion. But I love for me the fact that this was a two and a half week trial and it took the jury one hour, one hour to give the estate of Darryl Boyd eighty million dollars. That sends a huge message.
And just to know that it took them, babe, one hour to give that award, that is telling.
I mean that it sends a message. Yes, are they ever going to see that money?
No?
I don't think it was the point necessarily of being in court. But how do you right this kind of wrong? How can you ever? Ever? We should never make a mistake like this. He took these guys' lives, who couldn't find jobs, who fell on hard times, who had kinds of alcohol drug abuse problems in their lives. They couldn't get lives back that were taken from them as teenagers. This cannot, it should never happen. It sounds crazy that you would. I would rather see a guilty man go
free than an innocent man be put in jail. We shouldn't have to make that kind of decision. But damn, you cannot do this to people. And he's dead now because of what the state did. To him. I will absolutely state, who knows what his life would have looked like, it could have been thin.
About So he dies of pancreatic cancer, and look, anyone who has had cancer, you start to wonder why, why me? How did this happen to me? Especially when you don't have family history, and any doctor will tell you stress, stress, emotional stress. The toll that takes on your body is palpable. It is document like, you can document it. It is like there. I think that that would be a very fair connection to make between the unbelievable stress this man
and this teenager faced. Yes, it cut his life short. I think that is a very fair deduction to make based on what you see this man, what he went through to be wrongfully convicted as a teenager, as a black teenager in nineteen seventy six, being accused of robbing and killing a white.
Man in Buffalo. And again, Buffalo has a history of racial strife. Let's it's certainly throw that out there. This is Buffalo in nineteen seventy six, So maybe you like, okay, some people in this area will go, yes, that that actually reads for Buffalo at that time, but this was specific. What is this misdeeds, misdeeds of prosecutors and withholding evidence is why these young fellas ended up having decades of
their lives taken away from them. That just cannot happen. So, yes, you applaud, You're happy to see, but is this eighty million ever gonna get seen?
No?
They sued what this was the county?
Yes?
Was it not this time? They already some of them already got with four point seven million from the City of Buffalo. So some money has been paid. Can you ever make up for it?
No?
Not really? What does this mean? What do we do? If nothing else? I hope this gets us to pay attention more and more to our criminal justice system.
Yes, and we've been talking about, we have been covering and we will continue to do so. Our execution schedule in this country. And look, you can feel how you feel about the death penalty, but this is one of those cases where okay, these young men were not given the death penalty, actually shockingly, but it's New York so that's why. But imagine if this were a death penalty case, you cannot undo an execution, and you do see the disparity, the unfair group of people who are put on death row.
It is undeniable. And so you see a case like this where there is actual proof that prosecutors and investigators acted illegally, like that is the best way to describe it. So we saw and I just think about the fight that this man had, Darryl Boyd had for his entire life, but he ultimate only file a lawsuit in twenty twenty two.
And here is what the allegations were that the jury bought and the jury sent a very telling verdict about prosecutors did not disclose more than a dozen pieces of evidence in this case that pointed to other suspects a dozen pieces of evidence. They also can improve that investigators coerced witnesses to give false statements. We see this all the time. Jail house informants, eyewitnesses, the worst kind of evidence you could possibly notoriously historically has been proven are
just not reliable. And yet time and time again, how often do we see people's lives hanging in the balance. Their lives are determined by this type of testimony that has been proven to be not reliable.
Including from one of the Buffalo Five. Only four of the five ended up in prison because one of the five testified against the other four that one robes. I don't know how soon after these convictions, but certainly now has been screaming from the mountaintops that know, his testimony against the other four was coursed. He did not mean it, and he has taken he has recanted essentially everything he said about the other four.
My goodness, And as we alluded to Erie County, that's buffalo. They have already said they're going to appeal this judgment. So of course, yes, the eighty million dollars hanging in the balance.
They can't paign it like they literally do not have the money. You can say what you want, they don't have it. They got to figure something else out. But they don't have eighty million floating around.
No, and I would say most jurisdictions do not. But the idea idea is that this sends a message to any community, any county who wants to go ahead and make false claims and build a case on false allegations against someone. And that is important. But we're going to get into what the reaction was from the Boyd family on this verdict, on Erie County's reaction to this verdict, and where it goes from here.
Welcome back, everyone.
We are talking about one of, if not the largest award ever given in terms of money for a wrongful conviction case in this country, Darryl Boyd, And sadly we have to say the estate of Daryl Boyd was awarded eighty million dollars by a jury of his peers. They took an hour to come up with his verdict after hearing all of the evidence of what Darryl Boyd had to endure from the time he was a teenager wrongfully accused of murdering a white man back in Gosh in
nineteen seventy six. He along with three others because they're called the Buffalo Five, but one of the Buffalo five was co Worce we now know, into testifying against four other defendants who all paid the price for a crime they did not actually commit. And so it is one of these atrocities. And we hear about so many of
unfortunately these young men being sent to death row. But in a sense, yes, this young man, Darryl Boyd, spent decades in prison and even longer trying to maintain his innocence until posthumously, after he already died from pancreatic cancer. His mother and his son were there when the verdict was read by that jury, saying, you are owed eighty million dollars for what you have suffered because of our
supposed justice system. And I wanted to read what Darryl Boyd's reps said about this verdict because it was just, it was heartrending. He lost his whole adult life to this wrongful conviction. The jury heard how many years he was suffering in maximum security prison. All the terrible things
you assume happened in prison happened in prison. And they said he would not have spent forty five years asserting his innocence and fighting for his liberty in connection with the crime that he did not commit and had not been for the misdeeds of prosecutors, police, all the people who were involved in prosecuting him.
The tragedy of his life is directly attributable to the misdeeds, as they say, of the state, and that just it can never ever happen. Your heart goes out to these folks that eighty million. Who knows how it's going to be settled, how it's going to be resolved. I think that the county isn't necessarily arguing or that misdeeds were done. It was just a matter of we can't pay this, so we have to appeal this. How do you resolve this?
I don't know, But these stories, there is nothing more tragic in our justice system than when someone, an innocent person goes to prison. A guilty person going free is awful, but we cannot ever have this happen.
And these are the kinds of judgments that make headlines. And that's important because we learn about this is something. This is a story I did not know about. Did you know about the Buffalo five?
Yes? I did not.
I will fully admit it's.
Come up again. We had the Buffalo shooting at the recently with the at the grocery store. Buffalo has a history, Reflo just has a history, and these things come up.
Yes, So for people who aren't and who weren't aware or who weren't around when this was all making headlines,
this kind of a jury decision matters. Maybe not for the fact that his family members are actually going to get the eighty million dollars, but it makes enough headlines where we're recognizing the injustice that occurred, the imbalance, and the comp how our justice system works, it's weighted heavily towards those who have money for proper representation, who have the ability to defend themselves, and those who do not.
And that is not a fair justice system, period. So I do think it's interesting to at least read what Erie County Buffle low As in Erie County said in reaction to this judgment. And this is telling because you pointed out TJ they don't have the money. But here is what they said. The county executive said this after the jury's decision. I feel bad for mister Boyd who since passed, but we, the people of Erie County, have to pay for it. We don't have eighty 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. We just think the amount of the judgment was excessive. What do you think about that?
Yeah, we agree, but we can't pay. I mean, yes, we agree wrong was done. This is awful, But those folks now in those roles, weren't there in those roles fifty years ago, and now they're trying to do right by their citizens and trying in some way maybe do right by this man who's done wrong by that government that they now represent. I get it. I don't know the right thing now is to do with a man
is dead. His life was taken, not by pancreatic cancer, I would argue, so this is just another tragedy all around that we're trying to find something to learn from, something to learn from.
And I think that's the whole point of talking about these cases and the importance of these cases, even when they're long overdue and perhaps never actually received. There is something to that jury's verdict in the honor of Daryl Boyd's name, who he was, and more importantly, who he was not. So thank you everyone for listening to us. We certainly appreciate it. I'm Mami Robock alongside TJ. Holmes. Thank you for listening to us as always, and we'll talk to you soon.
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