Police chaos destroyed a man’s life, but in one hour, a jury tried to make it all right

A federal jury just awarded a staggering $80 million to the estate of Darryl Boyd, a Buffalo man who spent nearly 25 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a 1976 murder. This massive verdict came incredibly quickly. After a two-and-a-half week trial, the federal jury in the Western District of New York only needed about an hour to return its decision, per ABC News.

That is incredible speed, and it really shows how clearly the jury saw the evidence laid out before them. Boyd’s attorneys are already billing this award as one of the largest monetary payouts for a wrongful conviction case in the entire U.S.

Mr. Boyd, who was one of the Black teenagers arrested in the case often referred to as the Buffalo Five, filed his lawsuit back in 2022. He was seeking damages and alleging truly awful behavior from the Buffalo Police investigators and Erie County prosecutors. The core of the claim is that they failed to disclose more than a dozen pieces of evidence that actually pointed toward other suspects in the murder of William Crawford.

Justice is hard to get

You’d think that’s bad enough, but the lawsuit also alleged that investigators coerced witnesses into giving false statements that implicated Boyd. Plus, prosecutors committed summation misconduct by making inappropriate or false comments during their closing arguments. Boyd’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit that if it weren’t for the misdeeds of the defendants, Mr. Boyd wouldn’t have been prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned in violation of his constitutional rights.

He spent 45 years asserting his innocence and fighting for his freedom for a crime he didn’t commit. This case is especially heartbreaking because Mr. Boyd tragically died in 2023 from terminal pancreatic cancer before the trial could even be held. His mother and son, however, attended the trial every single day.

Ross Firsenbaum, one of the attorneys representing the estate, emphasized the devastating toll the conviction took on Boyd’s life. Mr. Firsenbaum stated, “He lost his whole adult life to this wrongful conviction. The jury heard just how many years he was suffering in maximum security prison. All the terrible things you assume happen in prison, happened in prison.”

Even after his initial release from prison, his struggles didn’t stop. He was stuck on parole for two decades before a judge finally vacated his conviction in 2021. The county opted not to retry Boyd or John Walker Jr., whose conviction in the case was also vacated.

Mr. Firsenbaum explained that being out on parole was just as difficult for Boyd, who suffered from PTSD and anxiety. He struggled constantly to get or keep jobs because of his conviction, and eventually developed a substance abuse addiction as he tried to self-medicate.

This is where I have to share my personal reaction: the county’s defense during the trial was absolutely offensive. Mr. Firsenbaum revealed that the county actually argued that Boyd’s substance use was the cause of his problems, not the nearly three decades he spent wrongfully incarcerated. “And that’s offensive,” Firsenbaum stressed. “And the jury recognized that and responded with this verdict.” I completely agree; that defense is truly disgusting, and it sounds like the jury felt the same way.

It’s clear the jury recognized this wasn’t just a single mistake by one employee. The attorneys successfully proved there was a “pattern and practice of misconduct” at the time of the original convictions.