“Justice Under God.”

the support. You're welcome. Thankspellacher of the Red Sox would love to have me there. Oh yeah, well probably not, probably not, but we can dream anyway. Okay, we're going to put the Red Sox aside for the moment. They still have two more games with the White Sox so they can win the series. I want to get to a very serious topic. I spent this afternoon and early this evening reading a book that was sent to me by a good friend and somewhat of a colleague. Christopher J. Muse,

former Superior Court judged here in Massachusetts. Was on the bench for about seventeen years, but before that practice as a lawyer. In one of the most high profile cases, that was a case involving Bobby Joe Leister. Many of you in the audience are familiar with the case, but for those of you who are not, I want to welcome Chris Muse. I should say Judge Mws but I feel I owe you. I know you well enough to say, Chris, Chris, how are you tonight?

restless than any other senior in the class. And I think I held the record for about ten years. But but I.

your dad was the Bobby Joe Leister case. And it turned it turned out to be a huge case, and you fought every every obstacle that was thrown in your way. I can identify with some of those obstacles. Just give us some. I'm just going to take a minute or so, and then I got to take a quick break. How when you first got this case. How long did it take you to figure out this is the case that's a missed a conviction, that was a that is a miscarriage of justice.

a little bit of money, but I need more. Can you give me some casework? And this is four or five o'clock in the afternoon. He's going through the mail and he opened up an envelope from the Federal District Court where he had been appointed to represent this fellow Bobby Joe Lista for his third petition to habeas corpus, which was unusual usually he get one and he looked it over and he said, hah, this guy's being charged

convicted of murder. He's run out of appeals. Why don't you, why don't he Why don't you practice on this case? Is what he said. And he said, this guy, you know, you know, he must be a cry baby. Why is he? Why is he doing this? But this is what he said to me that was most vital. He said. I said to him, first of all, it's a murder case. I can't do it. And he said, and it's sort of like what you just mentioned about Alex Cora. You can't do any worse. He said to me, you can't

do any worse than the other lawyers he had. So what happened was to get to your point, he said, I may you have to go out and talk to him face to face. Don't just rely on the papers. So to answer a question. About a week later, I went out, I spoke with him. I met this very gentle guy. He was accompanied by this jailhouse lawyer by the name of Victor. That explained to me why it was going to be a great appeal for me to take.

And I walked out of it with an unflinching belief that he was telling me the truth and that he was innocent. And I went home and I read the case summary, and I saw that there were lots of variables. It was an identification case, and without knowing anything else, I knew that if it was identification, it could have been a misidentification. And it was my naivete dan more than anything else, that caused me to say, this guy

is innocent. I just never had it. I was never aft to make that kind of evaluation, and that was dominant. I convinced my father to go out and speak with him, and after he spoke with Bobby, and this is a wise old guy that's been around the block many many times, and he was convinced of it as well. So we started off at this plateau March nineteen seventy seven, believing that this guy not only was innocent, but he was really screwed by the system.

not guilty when a verdict. When a jury comes back with a not guilty verdict, they are saying the Commonwealth and they're only saying the Commonwealth did not fulfill its obligation to prove all the elements of the crime that was alleged beyond a reasonable doubt. No jury comes back and says innocent, but a lawyer like yourself can get

a sense sometimes. I had the same feeling the first time I met Joe Salvadi in Conquered State Prison and I asked him a couple of questions, and you have that sort of eerie feeling that this guy actually might be innocent. We want to talk about your journey. We're going to be joined on the other side by the former mayor of Springfield who was on the Governor's Council when you were able to secure a commutation, which was a very difficult thing to do. But there's so much

to this story. We're going to try to get it all in in the hour. Those of you you have a question, feel free to join the conversation. Six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty. My guest is form of Superior Court Justice Judge Chris Muse his book Justice under Got and this

is a great book. I read it today. It's about one hundred and eighty so pages give you exactly as Yeah, it was a little bit longer, about one ninety and well written, easy to read, but it really does give you an understanding of how the court systems work and how reluctant. What I came away with, Chris was the reluctance of all the judges up and down in the court system to actually say, hey, there may be a

problem here. Many of the judges who I think you reference here in my opinion, went out of their way to maintain the conviction, even though you folks had made so many really compelling arguments that there were at a minimum serious questions and maybe that this was indeed case of actual innocence. Back with Chris Muse and phone calls and guests, and you're going to have a You're going to go to law school for the next forty minutes, folks, whether you like it or not. So stay with us.

It's a great story.

age of nineteen for murder he didn't commit. He spent more than fifteen years at a Massachusetts state prison before Bob and Chris Muse won his freedom. This is a great book. Chris on Us is Michael Albano from a mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts. Mister mayor, former Governor's Council.

which you did finally get. But seeking a commutation was difficult because the practice of commutations in those days required that the inmate, before commutation would be given, had to express regret and sorrow for the crime that he had committed. And your client was insistent that he had nothing to apologize for because he did commit the crime. And maybe the two of you can explain how you were able to work around that. I guess Michae o'bono gave you

some pretty good advice on this, Chris. Why don't you start it then, Mike, we can work you into the conversation.

this to me? And I said, he said, you got a fair trial, and he looked at me and he said, how could I have gotten a fair trial if I'm innocent? And I said, listen, Bobby, you got to be patient. You got a second I'm going to get you a commutation. Now. At that time, I had no idea how to do it, but he did because everyone that was serving a second or first degree murder case knew exactly what the formula was.

And he basically screamed at me a little bit and he said to me, I won't even get a hearing until I've been in for twenty years, and I'll be too old to have a family. I remember that vividly. And then he said to me, and I'm never going to say I'm sorry, and he won't let me do it. So those were the rules. I got the actual regulations myself. And then, because I'm always looking for guidance, I knew who was going to be my guiding light. It was

my friend from another source. He was a probation officer, and I knew Mike from many many years before this, who were very good friends. So I called him up and I said, if you go over to the public house, I'll buy you a beer and give me give me, give me a lecture on how I handle a commutation. And he gave it to me, and he gave me the best advice ever. I'll sum it and then I

think summarize it. He said, you're going to have to be able to of all, make a compelling case as to why it's possible or plausible that this skid is innocent. I said, I'll do it. The second thing is, if you get through us, you have to go political. That is, the governance council has to approve it, so you're gonna

have to favorable publicity for it. And that was critical as well, because if he said, if the board gives you the commutation, the governor has to have some kind of popular push and as well as a governance council.

And that caused me to be able to reach out to another fellow that ended up recruiting a very important cause of this machine, a guy by the name of Charlie Kenny, who was a writer of the Globe that wrote an incredibly compelling argument about Bobby's case, made it into the Boston Globe magazine, and that caused to get

some new evidence. But I want to go right back, and I'll let Mike explain what it was about when and how being able to get a commutation dependent upon either saying you sorry or getting the board to waive it. And Mike, Mike, go ahead.

fifty seven commutations of first and second degree murders. That was the thing to do in those days. So we went from a very liberal criminal justice system and Department of Corrections into a conservative mode under Ed King. So when Ducacus came back, he was still reeling from all the commutations that he'd given and he was not in favor of doing any commutations during his second term of office.

So when Chris came to see me, I gave him that advice and I said, look, the advisory board, apart in the Parole Board, is really not accepting the fact that someone is innocent. This is just the way it is. They you do have to make a compelling case. And in those days that's how it was. And Chris is credit and to his team. They made the case.

a governor. But again, you I know, were important on the board at the time, and there's a lot of pressure brought, I believe to members of the Governor's Council, were pressures brought to the Governor's Council by law enforcement to back off these commutations.

Board of Pardons and the Governor's Council. So it's political, it's challenging, and that's why very few of these commutations that ever go through.

But I think it's more important to talk about your success and what Bobby Joe Leister was able to accomplish as a civilian, as a freedman as a result again of your efforts and your dad's efforts, because I think that's a big part of the story that people for us to tell him, Yeah, he was innocent, he did do the crime. We know that, and your book proves that.

But the results, the fruit of your work is the amount of work that Bobby joe Leister did in his post conviction period of time, which may have saved a lot of lives at a very critical time in Boston into the nineteen nineties. I want to get to that part of the book as well. I think you know exactly what I'm talking about, Chris, I would be back on side right after this quick news break at the bottom of the hour.

who spent fifteen years in prison for murder he didn't commit. Chris, if you could, and again, I know this is tough to encapsulate on the air, give us a quick encapsulation of how you really became convinced beyond your instinct, but became convinced legally that Bobby Joe Lester had been framed for this murder, a murder of a variety store owner that he just didn't do.

The police came and they gave a description over the airwaves and it was wanted for armed robbery and murder. Two blackmailes six feet tall, both dirty look and eating shaves, one of whom was wearing a black shirt in green pants and had a hat. Now fast forward to your old neighborhood, because I know you played hockey at the Boston Arena and I did too, and so I knew who this was. And way on the other side of town, right way on the other side of town. Bobby was

walking on the street. He was talking to some friends. He's in the south end St. Petel Street, over by the Symphony and that neighborhood, and a police car came by, did a reverse saw him, pointed to him and said, hey, we want to talk to you about that murder that happened over in Dorchester. And what they did was they picked him up. They brought him down to Boston City Hospital under what the court said was to make a

bedside confrontation with a dying victim. And of course the police did not know them as what the judge says, in point of fact, mister Whiteside was dead when he left the store under a sheet and brought basically to the emergency room further and then further to the mug In any event, Missus Whiteside is distraught. They said, we think we have a guy that you might might have been involved with something to that effect. They take her outside the pocket lot the sea Bobby taken outside of

the cruiser. It was actually a paddy wagon. I can use that expression. It was taken out of the I know you and I could talk later about it, and so that he was able to be seeing handcuffed, she says, can I take a closer look? They go over there, and they do take a closer look and says, yep, that's the man that killed my husband. And well that was the beginning of the tragedy because that identification was as dirty and sullied as it could ever be, and she never went behind it.

the evidence. And that all happened because I was under the direction of the master. My father was a great lawyer and he knew that you have to get the facts. And we just scoured the record for everything, and we brought appeals in front of the successive judges to say that, you know, the grand jury minutes said that there was there was confusion, there was there was misidentifications. The police

lied about the circumstances of it. Bobby Joe had a had a time X watch when he was arrested, and the guy that did the killing had lost his Bolivar watch at the store. He only had a few bucks in his pocket. And the big one they told you earlier was that we discovered that there was a They called a paraffin test as a shorthand expression, but it's a gunpowder residue test that they performed, and when Bobby was arrested, he said, we want to take samples of

your hands and he says, what will it do? He says, well, it will show whether you whether you whether you shot a gun recently, Which hand do you use? You or right? You're lefty. When you heard the explanation, he said to the cops, take both of my hands. So they sent the sent the test down to the FBI and it came back with there was no gunpowder residue on them. But the report said that the results were quote unquote inconclusive. And that's another storyline that that was that I can't

get into because it's studios. At the end of the day, the end of the day, we weren't able to persuade anyone.

the bone. You were just going to keep digging and digging and digging, and that obviously helped you with the commutation, and it eventually led to the freedom of Bobby joe Leister. And what I want to do is, I want to take a quick break, and I want to bring not only Counselor and Mayor Albano back into the conversation, but I wanted most importantly to have you explain the work

that Bobby joe Leister did unfortunately fire. Yeah, I want to talk about his legacy, which of course never would have occurred without your help, your assistance, your legal assistants, and your dad's legal work, which again, people often look at lawyers and they look at them somewhat skeptically. And the only time people don't look at lawyers skeptically sometimes when they need a lawyer. We'll take a quick break.

I'm going to be back with Chris Muse and also former mayor of Springfield Michael Albano, who served on the Governance Council which gave the commutation, and if I can get a couple of calls in, I will buy. I most importantly want you to hear the story, and I want you to get the book Justice Under God by Chris Muse m Us former Superior Court judge. Back on Nightside right after this.

Justice Under God. With Us. Also is Michael Albano, former mayor of Springfield, amongst other things, that served under the Governor's Council and one of the votes that freed Bobby Joe Lester allowed him to leave prison. Gentlemen, quick comment on realizing that not only Bobby Joe Leister's legacy, but Chris your legacy as well as Council Albino's legacy, are very much involved in this because obviously, without the work of both of your work and Mike's vote, Bobby Jolista

might have died in prison. Just give us a quick example, Chris, of what Bobby was able to accomplish in his life. And we don't have a lot of time.

that a few of us are blessed with. And that's the thing that sustained him. He said, he said, I left my soul in that he of the Good Master above, and he would repeat that regularly to me. He believed that everything was going to turn out alright because God was going to take care of him. So when he got out, we're talking about a guy that is just I think he's a near perfect human being, is remarkable person. He became not only a former client up front, he was like a brother to me, and he was like

a son to my father. And when he got out he was looking for work for future. I encouraged him to sign up with the Boston Street Workers program. There was a brand new program and it was basically to work on the streets with the most at risk kids in the city. He did it for thirty years, and he did more, and people that are in the city that became prominently Tracy Lithgutt and Robert Lewis and others, they will tell you that he was the anchor for

this program to get the kids steered straight. But in one year he had what was called the Boston Miracle when they were able to negotiate and Bobby was part of it, a ceasefire with all these burgeoning gangs out there to reduce the homicides for people less than seventeen to zero. And before that you were seeing little twelve year old girls being shot and killed, and kids all over the place, dozens of them, and Bobby and his

team of street workers brought them all down. He became an icon Bobby and I used to speak to youth groups and our favorite one is a group called the Judicial Youth Corp. We did it for like thirty years. We had to stop. I never stopped doing it. But Bobby died tragically in a home fire in twenty twenty. But U Killer's death, he got out in the streets. Everyone in the neighborhoods, particularly in Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester, everyone knew Bobby, and Bobby was a peacemaker. Bobby was a

guy that gave support. He's the one that helped them get jobs, etc. And he died. When he died, Mayor Walsh during the COVID press release first conferences he had every day asked the city to give him a moment of silence because he was one of the favorite sons of the city. He was just blessed. So I guess I'm telling you. You know, in a short hand thirty

years of working. He told me he had to attend more than eight hundred funerals of young people that were victims of violence because he either knew them or he was there to give protection during the services. So I mean he was just remarkable.

it at the House not reconsidered. Now, Lester got to Tom Finneran, who was the Speaker of the House at the time, and he also got to John Slattery of State Representative Peabody at the time, and he flipped both of their votes with his story that an innocent man could in fact be executed in Massachusetts. Now, we don't think much about the death penalty in Massachusetts these days, but it was a pretty hot issue there, and Bobby Joe Leister campaigned across the Commonwealth telling his story and

it changed the dynamics of the state legislature. And that's why we don't have a death penalty today.

would never have had that is for sure. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you both very much, but I want to give a couple of callers who have hung on here an opportunity to express their their thoughts. And I'm going to ask them to be both very quick. But they've waited for almost a half an hour, So let me first go to Joe and Belmont. Joe, Uh,

I know you've waited a long time. A quick comment on the case for either Chris Muse, former Superior Court judge or former Governor's councilor Michael Albano.

book Justice Undergod is available. It's on Amazon. How else can people get it?

book on the market. And I want everyone to know that if they buy the book, that that five or six dollars what I would have gotten is royalty is going directly to the New England Innocence Project to continue to promote awareness for wrongful convictions that that you and and Mike and I know so well and also support the funding and they can get it. Basically, Amazon's the easiest way jumps right out of that you and so I encourage anyone to learn a little bit more. There's

two things. Learn a little bit about the criminal justice system and learn a whole lot about this incredible human being that we were blessed to have in Boston.

is no standard. There is no standard to free an innocent man, and you were able to free an innocent man. Congratulations to you, Chris Muse, and also congratulations to Mike Albano. Mike, we need more public figures in public servants like you who will take a tough vote as you did on this commutation case and made a big difference in the life of Bobby, Joe Lester and thousands of young men who he counseled with during his thirty years of freedom.

I want to thank you both for what you've done well.

build contractor. You have all sorts of questions. He's got all the answers back on Night's side right after the ten o'clock news