July 25, 2022 • 34 mins
In May of 1992, Sylvia Boykin and Bernetta Pope were struggling with substance addiction. Pope owed Boykin money who, in turn, owed money to two younger men. So Boykin and the men went to the house where Pope stayed in Philadelphia, PA to collect the drug debt. Boykin went inside alone but when she returned empty handed, the men went in with guns. An argument ensued, shots were fired, and Pope was killed. Since Boykin was unarmed, she should have been considered a witness. Nevertheless, she was arrested, convicted of first degree murder and sent to prison for life. Maggie speaks to Sylvia Boykin, Jill McCorkel, Boykin's advocate, and Boykin's daughter Pennie Oliver.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of child
sexual abuse and attempted suicide. Please listen with caution and care. Jason,
we talk a lot about false confessions, and we know
how and why they happen. Is there a scenario in
which you would willfully confess to a crime like a murder. Well,
(00:24):
I can envision the scenario which I would confess to
a murder that I didn't commit, and that would be
if I became so disoriented, scared, confused, lonely, and just
terrified of the people who you know, we all believe
are there to protect us and to help us and
(00:45):
to find the truth when they turn on you. Sometimes
people see it as their only way out of that
impossible situation. And you're in that room and you're like,
I don't want to die, and maybe this will get
sorted out because I know I didn't do it. And
he kept saying, well, if you sign this, i'll let
(01:07):
you go home. And so I was like, but this
is not what happened. So he get me to the
chair and he hit me with a phone book to
wake me up. He's like, sign this and we will
let you go. I signed a paper and I never
left prison from love of for good. This is wrongful
(01:29):
conviction with Maggie Freeling today Sylvia Boykin. On May, Sylvia
Boykin went to collect a drug debt from a woman
named Burnetta Pope. Sylvia showed up at the house in
(01:51):
North Philadelphia with two men, Lamont Antoine Blackman, and Aaron Major.
Burnetta owed Sylvia money, who in turn owed Antoine and
Aaron as well as other men who were higher up
in the drug network, but Burnetta was late in paying,
so Sylvia brought Antoine and Aaron to prove that she
was trying her best to obtain the debt. But things
(02:13):
went horribly wrong when they got there. Burnetta and her
son Albert refused to pay. Exactly what happened next we
may never know. Put gunfire erupted and Burnetta Pope was
shot dead. Sylvia was quickly arrested, charged and convicted of
first degree murder. But Sylvia did not shoot anybody. I
(02:36):
went there with no one Titchenes that no one would
get killed. I didn't kill anyone. I didn't order for
anyone to get killed. I'm Sylvia Boigan and sixty three.
I'll be sixty four in two days. And here I
said thirty one years later in a prison. Sylvia Boykin
(03:09):
was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May nine. She's the
youngest of six kids, so when I was born, all
my sisters were grown and they were having babies, so
I grew up with my nieces and nephews. On the surface,
Sylvia's life seemed great. She went to Magnet Schools for
(03:31):
kids with high i q s, and when she graduated,
she moved to Virginia for college or she studied data
entry and medical administrative assistance. She had a good job
at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia. Was on
her way to greatness. But Sylvia wound up on a
different path, one of substance abuse and addiction. Somewhere inside
(03:54):
of me, I was running. God always had his hand
on me, but I was running, and I was trying
to I was trying to find something to fix to
pain because I was very like, very bad, which is
(04:14):
um a really tough subject for me. Sylvia's inner trauma
and suffering it started when she was a child and
her grandfather sexually assaulted her. He didn't actually like have
sex with me to penetrate me anything, but he touched
me in my private area. But that was just like
(04:38):
the beginning, you know, of things that happened in my
life as a job. Then, at ten years old, she
was raped by her nineteen year old brother. I had
to go to the hospital and I was a very
young girl, and at that time I was stitched up,
and uh. I was told by my mother not to
(05:01):
throw the police who did it, because that they would
arrest my brother. The assault and rape, plus the fact
that her family covered it all up, took a huge
toll on Sylvia. After I was raped by my brother,
I took my mother's sleeping pills. I tried to kill
(05:22):
myself when I was a ten. Yeah, I took the
whole bottle. Oh my gosh, who found you? My niece Valerie,
and she's like two years younger than me. Um, she
found me and she went and got my sister. They
took me to the hospital. They popped my stomach and
(05:43):
they put me into children psych wood. Sylvia's older sister, Teresa,
was furious at the situation and intent on making sure
Sylvia would be safe going forward. The whole family lived
in a three story complex. Sylvia lived on the first
floor with her mother and brother. Well, the rest of
(06:04):
the family lived upstairs. Teresa lived on the second floor.
She took me and wouldn't let me sleep downstairs in
my mother's part. She said I couldn't stay down there.
She took me and so I stayed up in her
part until I healed up and until I got well.
(06:24):
And this isn't even the extent of Sylvia's suffering. Throughout
her childhood and adolescence, Sylvia was again molested numerous times
by close family friends. So I went through a lot
of um being raped and molested that I used to
(06:44):
just go like it in the front of the church
for alto prayer, and I would just stay there in prayer,
and you know, I just wanted to like, why why
did these people do this to me? M Well, Sylvia's
sisters tried to protect her from the sexual abuse. Sylvia
(07:06):
sought out coping mechanisms. My sister she would she started
she would give me beer, and sometimes she would give
me strinked this liquor called mc norton's, and she would
give me some. So, you know, do you think your
need to escape is kind of what led you to
(07:26):
drug use? Yes, I always felt like I needed to
run away. I needed to numb the pain. So I
would always be like the life of the party, like
everybody wanted to like to be around me, And sometimes
(07:46):
I think I tried to ship my brain off from it. Eventually,
when she was seventeen years old, Sylvia met the man
who would become her first husband. She was motivated to
move forward past the trauma and build a normal life.
(08:11):
That's a little girl. I always dream about just having
this beautiful home and children and a husband and um,
just being very happy. I sat always drew pictures like
that when I was a little with the sunshine and
the house with it and trees. I used to always
(08:32):
or those pictures in school. Sylvia ended up having three daughters, Penny, Titia,
and Kimberly. She was seventeen when she had Penny, her oldest.
Here's Penny. She was ready. I was saying into our lives, meaning, um,
(08:52):
she was you know that that mom that was into
you know, the girl scouts, the PTA meetings. Um, she
was always um, you know, into the family functions and
you know everything with us. Sylvia tried her best to
(09:13):
be a good mom and wife, put the damage from
her past experiences inevitably disrupted her personal life. I've been
married four times already, but I could never maintain, like
like keep a marriage going. As the distractions from her
trauma became increasingly destructive, Sylvia eventually started abusing hard drugs
(09:37):
like crack. Do you remember any of her drug use? Yes, yes,
I remember. She tried to keep it undercover, but as
me being the oldest of three girls, I noticed a
lot that was going on with her. For example, Penny
(09:58):
says she remembers late night out and a lot of
trips in and out of the house. She would be
late for jobs. I mean she would work jobs, but
she would be late or sometimes she would be tired,
and so we would have to fend for ourself. And
when I say fund for ourself, get out and get
(10:21):
ready for school, I will be responsible making sure that
we got up for school, or making sure everything was
to handle in the household. It was a lot because
I felt like it was unfair to me. And I
would say at that age, I had a lot of
goals for myself, UM a lot of things I wanted
(10:44):
to do out of life. I wanted to go places
and do things and be on my own and and
be able to live my life, but instead Penny would
wind up permanently taking care of her siblings. By Sylvia
(11:09):
was suffering from a serious addiction to crack, and to
finance her own addiction, she was selling it for a
network of street level drug dealers. Sylvia says she sold
crack to forty three year old Burnetta Pope on a
few occasions, but she also felt sorry for Burnetta. She
describes the house Burnetta was staying in no furniture, no
(11:32):
running water, the bathroom didn't work, no TV, A few
old cheers like really nasty. I had brought her a
sweatsuit to put on. I took food there, gave of
food and I had I had just recently met them,
and they were very kind to me. In May of
(11:58):
Sylvia was waiting on seven d dollars from Burnetta, and
men from the network, including one of the bosses, Joseph,
demanded she get the money. I didn't know how the
whole operation was working. I only knew that he would
tell me to take stuff to her and that I
would go back to pick up the money. So she
went to the place where she knew Burnetta was staying.
(12:21):
I went around. They click money for him. She said
that she didn't have the money and she wasn't paying,
and so I told him so. The next day he
told me to go back. On May fifteen, Sylvia smoked
some crack during some booze and returned to the house.
This time she brought seventeen year old Lamont Antoine Blackman
(12:44):
and nineteen year old Aaron Major. These two were also
part of the dealing network, and Sylvia wanted to prove
that she had actually been trying to collect the money.
She owed them all along. She also thought their male
presence would persuade Burnetta into paying. They all went in
the same car together, Sylvia driving. They found Burnetta at
(13:06):
the house with a man and her twenty six year
old son, Albert. I went in the house first to
ask her for the money. She said she wasn't gonna
pay the money and whatever. So I went back out
and I told him in Antoine that she's what she said.
Aaron Antoine went in and I don't really know exactly
(13:29):
what happened, but I guess they all star. Everybody started
art him and all I heard was a couple of gunshots.
I froze, I was scared, and I was like what happened,
So they ran, they left me. I drove and when
I went around the block, I've seen them. Then they
(13:51):
got back in the car with me. Even after what
had just happened, Antoine and Aaron still demanded their money.
So I went to uh Ad Emagy and I took
the money out of my bank account and I paid them.
Sylvia says she dropped them off and went home. She
had no idea the gunshots she heard were bullets coming
(14:14):
at the neck and leg of Bernetta Pope. This episode
is underwritten by A I G, a leading global insurance company.
A I G is committed to corporate social responsibility and
(14:36):
to making a positive difference in the lives of its
employees and in the communities where we work and live.
In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance,
and in recognition of A I g's commitment to criminal
and social justice reform, the A i G pro Bono
Program provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented
(14:58):
communities and individuals. By the time Sylvia got home, police
were already waiting for her. They asked her where she
had been and what she knew about a shooting. Sylvia
was terrified. She denied knowing anything, and she denied knowing
Antoine and Aaron, but the police had received word that
(15:19):
Sylvia was at the house and it wasn't just a shooting.
Burnetta Pope was now dead. Her son Albert had called
nine when one and told the police where Sylvia lived,
so police knew that Sylvia was lying and that she
wasn't going to cooperate. Just two hours after the incident,
Sylvia was arrested for robbery, reckless endangerment, and assaults. When
(15:44):
they got to the police station, Detective Dennis Dusac questioned
Sylvia about everything that transpired that night. Um. When he
arrested me, he handcuffed me to a chair for hours,
and he kept answering me what happened. And I told
him I did ever really know what happened. And I
(16:05):
was talking to him and I was scared and I
didn't know, you know, what to say or what to do.
And he wouldn't let me go to bathroom, let me
urinate on myself. Then, she says, Detective du Sac wrote
out a statement for her to sign. I kept telling
my head three children at home, and he kept saying, well, um,
if you sign this I'll let you go home, and
(16:27):
so I was like, but this is not what happened.
So he kept me to the chair and then um,
I kept falling asleep and he hit me with a
phone book is big thick um paperback phone book to
wake me up. He's like, sign this and we will
let you go. I signed the paper and I never
left prison after that interaction, Sylvia ended up being charged
(16:58):
with first degree murder on top of robbery, conspiracy, and
possession of instruments of a crime. Antoine and Aaron were
also charged with murder, robbery, and a host of other crimes.
The three of them went to trial on March twenty three,
and we're all tried together. The prosecutor was John Doyle.
(17:23):
His argument was that Sylvia ordered Antoine and Aaron to
kill both Burnetta and her son Albert. And Doyle developed
the series from Albert, who said that even though she
was unarmed, Sylvia ordered the hit on their lives. In fact,
because it was agreed that Sylvia was unarmed, Albert's statements
were the main reason prosecutors could even charge Sylvia with
(17:46):
murder in the first place. Prosecutor Doyle also presented sylvia
signed statement as well as one from Aaron Major. There's
no evidence that Antoine Blackman signed a statement, but the
defense counsel said that the two statements that were presented
were coerced. In fact, on the stand, both Antoine and
(18:07):
Aaron said that Sylvia did not have a gun and
did not order anyone to shoot. All three also contended
that Albert actually threatened them with a gun. First forensic
show that Burnetta was shot by two different guns. Although
accounts very the defense and prosecution agreed on one thing.
Sylvia did not have a gun and did not shoot anyone.
(18:36):
What was that like to see your mom in coughs
and and facing a murder trial. I mean, that's I
imagine it's really traumatizing. Yes, it was, um, you know,
not being able to touch her or talk to her
and seeing them question her. And for me most because
my grandmother was there and at the time, my grandmother
(18:59):
was starting to go through dementia, so it was really hard. Um.
I think that was the most for me watching my
grandmother go through it, because my grandmother would just burst
out in court, just stand up and scream and be like,
you don't know what you're doing or you don't know
what you're talking about and just let my daughter go
(19:23):
and and the things that you're saying, she didn't do that,
So yes, it was really tough. On April one, Sylvia,
along with Antoine and Aaron, was convicted of first degree murder.
Sixteen year old Penny was now in charge of taking
care of her younger siblings, and it was hard. I
(19:47):
would tell friends like far as school jobs, when they
would ask about my mother, I would say that my
mother still live in Bugia. So Pete who that did
not know that my mother was incocerated. And I'm gonna
be honest. It was that love hate relationship. Penny says
(20:10):
it's been difficult to visit her mom in prison over
the years, so to be honest, Um, as a kid,
we did go a lot. It was a group that
went up and they took the children all the time.
But as I got older, I stopped going because I
(20:31):
didn't like it at all. Um, I didn't like the
way it felt to me. I didn't like saying my
mother like that, So I really I really didn't. I
stopped going a lot. But now that she's an adult
with children, Penny wants her kids to have a relationship
with their grandma, so they visit her. It's the only
(20:54):
way for her to her it's relationship with them since
the fact, you know, she is a lifer, and unfortunately
we grew up and we had kids of our own,
and that's the only way she would have a bond
with them and see them m Meanwhile, Sylvia filed appeal
(21:23):
after appeal to no avail. Neither of her two attorneys
were effective. Sylvia's trial attorney, Michael Wallace, failed to file
her appeal in a timely manner, so he was unable
to appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Eventually, her
rights to appeal were reinstated and she got a new attorney,
James Bruno, But the appeals that Bruno filed were all
(21:45):
denied and exhausted, leaving Sylvia very few options for release,
and Bruno had issues of his own. He was later
suspended from practicing law for violating rules of professional conduct. Meanwhile,
Antoine Blackman was released from prison on his direct appeal.
In One of the tragedies in this particular case is
(22:07):
that she never had adequate legal representation. This is Dr
Jill McCorkle. I'm a professor of sociology and criminology at
Villanova University, and I'm also the founder and the executive
director of the Philadelphia Justice Project for Women and Girls.
Dr McCorkle studies how mass incarceration intersects with gender and poverty.
(22:28):
She was looking into another similar case, a woman who
is not the shooter in a crime and also got
a life sentence when she came across Sylvia's case. There
are a number of women with similar kinds of scenarios
where it's the principal offender is a man. She says,
women are often at a unique disadvantage in this situation.
(22:52):
They're unable to cooperate with police because usually they're scared
of retaliatory violence and um, and then you know, police
and prosecutors engage in a malicious prosecution. And so that's
really how I got to Sylvia. Dr McCorkle believes that
Sylvia would have and should have been treated as a witness,
(23:13):
and that it was Sylvia's hesitancy to cooperate with police
that got her the murder charge. Remember when the police
asked Sylvia what she knew about the crime and if
she knew Antoine and Aaron, she said no, I was scared,
and I was like, what did they go do something
to my girls? If I could tell on him what
had happened, I was scared, like, I got three girls
(23:35):
at home that's alone, and I was afraid that if
I told on him, like it's something might happened to
my daughters. Dr McCorkle says that a lot of women
like Sylvia, who are vulnerable because of poverty, precarious lifestyles,
drug and alcohol abuse, and her domestic violence, are not
in a position where they can cooperate with police and prosecutors.
(23:59):
It puts them at risk. It often puts family members
at risk, and police and prosecutors, I'll say, I'll be
as as generous as possible misinterpret that hesitancy, and I
think in some cases honestly take that unwillingness to cooperate
(24:20):
as an indicator of criminal culpability and then hit them
with elevated charges to try to force their hand. And so,
you know, you can really look at these cases and
see women sort of situated between street violence and then
what I refer to as state violence, so that they're
(24:41):
sort of taking their chances either way. And those who
are particularly vulnerable to violence and retaliation are saying, all right, well,
you know, I'm gonna take my chances at trial because
it's better than taking my chances on the street. Sylvia
took those chances and they didn't land in her favor.
Albert's contention that Sylvia ordered the hit ended up being
(25:04):
her downfall, and Dr McCorkle believes that Albert testified to
this because of pressure he faced at the time. He
had an open drug charge, and after he offered up
this information, he was able to plead a very favorable
and short sentence to his own case, even though he
never initially said that Sylvia ordered the shooting. But Dr
(25:27):
McCorkle believes that Albert's testimony about Sylvia during the trial
is actually one of the most preposterous things about Sylvia's case.
When Sylvia is initially arrested, she's arrested for robbery, um,
maybe simple assaulter, aggravated assaults, nothing about murder. So even
(25:49):
when the police pick her up, there's no you know,
kind of framing of Sylvia as somehow this you know,
criminal master mind or or street heavy ordering the execution
of the people in this house. Um. Now, Albert testifies
to that, and I think probably does so, because that's
(26:12):
the only way that prosecutors can can hook Sylvia on
in any meaningful way. They need some kind of statement, um,
you know, going directly to her culpability. Dr McCorkle has
studied crack cocaine markets in depth. She says knowing their
structure is key to understanding the forces that led to
Sylvia's conviction. These markets are organized hierarchically and by gender.
(26:38):
The you know, Sylvia is in her thirties at the
time this goes down, and so one of the things
that prosecutors are doing at trial is saying, here's this
woman in our thirties and she's got these two you know, teenagers,
so she's the adult, so therefore, you know, she must
have been in charge of this. But that's not how
(27:00):
crack cocaine markets work. These markets and and particularly the
responsibility for retaliation and the responsibility for collecting debt is
men's responsibility, so you know, sort of gender segregation in
the drug market, so you know, women aren't the enforcers
in these markets, that's men. Even though Antoine Blackman was
(27:26):
eventually released from prison, Dr McCorkle believes him to be
the likeliest shooter in this case. The mythology on the
street is, yeah, you give a teenager the gun because
they're not going to get as lengthy as sentence as
an adult Wood, Which is the other reason that it's
entirely plausible to me that blackman is the shooter. He's
(27:47):
the juvenile, and so that's certainly not unusual. It was
the norm to have a juvenile b the shooter. So
I can see major handing that gun to black men.
Sylvia was left with a life without parole sentence, and
(28:10):
now with her appeals exhausted, where we're really left here
is commutation. And I think she deserves commutation on her merits,
you know, without even looking into the kind of specifics
of all, right, well, how culpable was she in this
particular case. But I think on her own merits she
deserves to have a sentence commutation, which would release her
(28:35):
from life in prison without possibility of parole. It would
allow her to go home to her family. Sylvia has
made the best of her time in prison. However, She's gotten,
you know, multiple certifications, and she's got three decades in Certainly,
certainly Sylvia has done everything that we would expect someone
to do over the duration of such a long period
(28:58):
of time. Sylvia goes to church for weekly services, Bible
study and prayer. She has continued to develop her computer skills,
and she studies entrepreneurship. But she especially enjoys being a
certified pure specialist. Train us to like sit down and uh,
(29:21):
to listen to people, you know, so it's not like
to tell them what to do, but just to be
listening and caring and helping them to find their only answer.
And it makes you feel good. Also, I try to
help like a lot of the young people. UM, I
try to guide them. I try to talk to them
a lot about being here and going home and making
(29:45):
a change in their life. Sylvia loves doing this and
this is what she wants to continue to do. Dr
McCorkle has also offered her a position with the Philadelphia
Justice Project for Women and Girls. When she gets out,
we're gonna have her be our ambassador and UM and
do a lot of outreach to other incarcerated women and
(30:07):
UM and certainly, you know, uh, there's there's no better
expert both with respect to these kinds of prosecutions as
well as uh, you know, an expert in in what
it means to be a woman, to be a mother,
to be a grandmother. Navigating decades in prison, I feel like,
(30:28):
after thirty one years and here that I've came to
know myself. I had so much that I want to
give back. I want to be able to go out
and to help young people. I want to be able
to tell my story that helps some young girl know
that no matter what happened in her life, no matter
(30:51):
she was molested, no matter if somebody you know let
her down the wrong road to get on drugs or
or to drink, that she can change. Sylvia is now
sixty four and in declining health. Among her ailments is
sciatic nerve damage, arthritis, and her neated disks, all of
(31:13):
which caused her daily pain. It is costing Pennsylvania taxpayers
so much to lock up a prison population that them
are fifty and older, and it's just incredibly expensive, and
so regardless of sort of where you're situated politically, there's
(31:33):
a recognition that we have got to get aging people
out of prison. Well, Sylvia knows she's not directly responsible
for Brunetta's death, she still feels regret over what happened,
(31:55):
and I'm just so so sorry, so everyone that I
heard yes for a paid did I course, I'm very
sorry for that. I wish I could take it all back.
I wish I could go back to that and two
(32:17):
things all different. I would just wish I could just
go back. In July, Dr McCorkle submitted a letter to
(32:39):
the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons urging them to grant Sylvia connutation.
Sylvia's case is up for review in October two. She
needs a majority of a five person panel to move
to the next round of voting, where she will need
all five votes to be free. If you'd like to
(33:01):
show your support for Sylvia, go to free Sylvia Boykin
dot com to sign a petition calling for her commutation.
Next time, Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Troy Burner, you
know I didn't have enough and do with it, so
you know, and they're not gonna be the final biden
(33:22):
to say I had not to do with it, so
you know. I held onto that. You know, that belief
where they say the truth set you free. Thank you
for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support
your local innocence organizations and go to the links in
(33:43):
our bio to see how you can help. I'd like
to thank our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wurtis,
as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson,
story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne
and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by
three time OSCAR nominated composer Ja Ralph. Be sure to
(34:05):
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at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a
production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
(34:27):
Company Number one
A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of child
sexual abuse and attempted suicide. Please listen with caution and care. Jason,
we talk a lot about false confessions, and we know
how and why they happen. Is there a scenario in
which you would willfully confess to a crime like a murder. Well,
(00:24):
I can envision the scenario which I would confess to
a murder that I didn't commit, and that would be
if I became so disoriented, scared, confused, lonely, and just
terrified of the people who you know, we all believe
are there to protect us and to help us and
(00:45):
to find the truth when they turn on you. Sometimes
people see it as their only way out of that
impossible situation. And you're in that room and you're like,
I don't want to die, and maybe this will get
sorted out because I know I didn't do it. And
he kept saying, well, if you sign this, i'll let
(01:07):
you go home. And so I was like, but this
is not what happened. So he get me to the
chair and he hit me with a phone book to
wake me up. He's like, sign this and we will
let you go. I signed a paper and I never
left prison from love of for good. This is wrongful
(01:29):
conviction with Maggie Freeling today Sylvia Boykin. On May, Sylvia
Boykin went to collect a drug debt from a woman
named Burnetta Pope. Sylvia showed up at the house in
(01:51):
North Philadelphia with two men, Lamont Antoine Blackman, and Aaron Major.
Burnetta owed Sylvia money, who in turn owed Antoine and
Aaron as well as other men who were higher up
in the drug network, but Burnetta was late in paying,
so Sylvia brought Antoine and Aaron to prove that she
was trying her best to obtain the debt. But things
(02:13):
went horribly wrong when they got there. Burnetta and her
son Albert refused to pay. Exactly what happened next we
may never know. Put gunfire erupted and Burnetta Pope was
shot dead. Sylvia was quickly arrested, charged and convicted of
first degree murder. But Sylvia did not shoot anybody. I
(02:36):
went there with no one Titchenes that no one would
get killed. I didn't kill anyone. I didn't order for
anyone to get killed. I'm Sylvia Boigan and sixty three.
I'll be sixty four in two days. And here I
said thirty one years later in a prison. Sylvia Boykin
(03:09):
was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May nine. She's the
youngest of six kids, so when I was born, all
my sisters were grown and they were having babies, so
I grew up with my nieces and nephews. On the surface,
Sylvia's life seemed great. She went to Magnet Schools for
(03:31):
kids with high i q s, and when she graduated,
she moved to Virginia for college or she studied data
entry and medical administrative assistance. She had a good job
at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia. Was on
her way to greatness. But Sylvia wound up on a
different path, one of substance abuse and addiction. Somewhere inside
(03:54):
of me, I was running. God always had his hand
on me, but I was running, and I was trying
to I was trying to find something to fix to
pain because I was very like, very bad, which is
(04:14):
um a really tough subject for me. Sylvia's inner trauma
and suffering it started when she was a child and
her grandfather sexually assaulted her. He didn't actually like have
sex with me to penetrate me anything, but he touched
me in my private area. But that was just like
(04:38):
the beginning, you know, of things that happened in my
life as a job. Then, at ten years old, she
was raped by her nineteen year old brother. I had
to go to the hospital and I was a very
young girl, and at that time I was stitched up,
and uh. I was told by my mother not to
(05:01):
throw the police who did it, because that they would
arrest my brother. The assault and rape, plus the fact
that her family covered it all up, took a huge
toll on Sylvia. After I was raped by my brother,
I took my mother's sleeping pills. I tried to kill
(05:22):
myself when I was a ten. Yeah, I took the
whole bottle. Oh my gosh, who found you? My niece Valerie,
and she's like two years younger than me. Um, she
found me and she went and got my sister. They
took me to the hospital. They popped my stomach and
(05:43):
they put me into children psych wood. Sylvia's older sister, Teresa,
was furious at the situation and intent on making sure
Sylvia would be safe going forward. The whole family lived
in a three story complex. Sylvia lived on the first
floor with her mother and brother. Well, the rest of
(06:04):
the family lived upstairs. Teresa lived on the second floor.
She took me and wouldn't let me sleep downstairs in
my mother's part. She said I couldn't stay down there.
She took me and so I stayed up in her
part until I healed up and until I got well.
(06:24):
And this isn't even the extent of Sylvia's suffering. Throughout
her childhood and adolescence, Sylvia was again molested numerous times
by close family friends. So I went through a lot
of um being raped and molested that I used to
(06:44):
just go like it in the front of the church
for alto prayer, and I would just stay there in prayer,
and you know, I just wanted to like, why why
did these people do this to me? M Well, Sylvia's
sisters tried to protect her from the sexual abuse. Sylvia
(07:06):
sought out coping mechanisms. My sister she would she started
she would give me beer, and sometimes she would give
me strinked this liquor called mc norton's, and she would
give me some. So, you know, do you think your
need to escape is kind of what led you to
(07:26):
drug use? Yes, I always felt like I needed to
run away. I needed to numb the pain. So I
would always be like the life of the party, like
everybody wanted to like to be around me, And sometimes
(07:46):
I think I tried to ship my brain off from it. Eventually,
when she was seventeen years old, Sylvia met the man
who would become her first husband. She was motivated to
move forward past the trauma and build a normal life.
(08:11):
That's a little girl. I always dream about just having
this beautiful home and children and a husband and um,
just being very happy. I sat always drew pictures like
that when I was a little with the sunshine and
the house with it and trees. I used to always
(08:32):
or those pictures in school. Sylvia ended up having three daughters, Penny, Titia,
and Kimberly. She was seventeen when she had Penny, her oldest.
Here's Penny. She was ready. I was saying into our lives, meaning, um,
(08:52):
she was you know that that mom that was into
you know, the girl scouts, the PTA meetings. Um, she
was always um, you know, into the family functions and
you know everything with us. Sylvia tried her best to
(09:13):
be a good mom and wife, put the damage from
her past experiences inevitably disrupted her personal life. I've been
married four times already, but I could never maintain, like
like keep a marriage going. As the distractions from her
trauma became increasingly destructive, Sylvia eventually started abusing hard drugs
(09:37):
like crack. Do you remember any of her drug use? Yes, yes,
I remember. She tried to keep it undercover, but as
me being the oldest of three girls, I noticed a
lot that was going on with her. For example, Penny
(09:58):
says she remembers late night out and a lot of
trips in and out of the house. She would be
late for jobs. I mean she would work jobs, but
she would be late or sometimes she would be tired,
and so we would have to fend for ourself. And
when I say fund for ourself, get out and get
(10:21):
ready for school, I will be responsible making sure that
we got up for school, or making sure everything was
to handle in the household. It was a lot because
I felt like it was unfair to me. And I
would say at that age, I had a lot of
goals for myself, UM a lot of things I wanted
(10:44):
to do out of life. I wanted to go places
and do things and be on my own and and
be able to live my life, but instead Penny would
wind up permanently taking care of her siblings. By Sylvia
(11:09):
was suffering from a serious addiction to crack, and to
finance her own addiction, she was selling it for a
network of street level drug dealers. Sylvia says she sold
crack to forty three year old Burnetta Pope on a
few occasions, but she also felt sorry for Burnetta. She
describes the house Burnetta was staying in no furniture, no
(11:32):
running water, the bathroom didn't work, no TV, A few
old cheers like really nasty. I had brought her a
sweatsuit to put on. I took food there, gave of
food and I had I had just recently met them,
and they were very kind to me. In May of
(11:58):
Sylvia was waiting on seven d dollars from Burnetta, and
men from the network, including one of the bosses, Joseph,
demanded she get the money. I didn't know how the
whole operation was working. I only knew that he would
tell me to take stuff to her and that I
would go back to pick up the money. So she
went to the place where she knew Burnetta was staying.
(12:21):
I went around. They click money for him. She said
that she didn't have the money and she wasn't paying,
and so I told him so. The next day he
told me to go back. On May fifteen, Sylvia smoked
some crack during some booze and returned to the house.
This time she brought seventeen year old Lamont Antoine Blackman
(12:44):
and nineteen year old Aaron Major. These two were also
part of the dealing network, and Sylvia wanted to prove
that she had actually been trying to collect the money.
She owed them all along. She also thought their male
presence would persuade Burnetta into paying. They all went in
the same car together, Sylvia driving. They found Burnetta at
(13:06):
the house with a man and her twenty six year
old son, Albert. I went in the house first to
ask her for the money. She said she wasn't gonna
pay the money and whatever. So I went back out
and I told him in Antoine that she's what she said.
Aaron Antoine went in and I don't really know exactly
(13:29):
what happened, but I guess they all star. Everybody started
art him and all I heard was a couple of gunshots.
I froze, I was scared, and I was like what happened,
So they ran, they left me. I drove and when
I went around the block, I've seen them. Then they
(13:51):
got back in the car with me. Even after what
had just happened, Antoine and Aaron still demanded their money.
So I went to uh Ad Emagy and I took
the money out of my bank account and I paid them.
Sylvia says she dropped them off and went home. She
had no idea the gunshots she heard were bullets coming
(14:14):
at the neck and leg of Bernetta Pope. This episode
is underwritten by A I G, a leading global insurance company.
A I G is committed to corporate social responsibility and
(14:36):
to making a positive difference in the lives of its
employees and in the communities where we work and live.
In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance,
and in recognition of A I g's commitment to criminal
and social justice reform, the A i G pro Bono
Program provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented
(14:58):
communities and individuals. By the time Sylvia got home, police
were already waiting for her. They asked her where she
had been and what she knew about a shooting. Sylvia
was terrified. She denied knowing anything, and she denied knowing
Antoine and Aaron, but the police had received word that
(15:19):
Sylvia was at the house and it wasn't just a shooting.
Burnetta Pope was now dead. Her son Albert had called
nine when one and told the police where Sylvia lived,
so police knew that Sylvia was lying and that she
wasn't going to cooperate. Just two hours after the incident,
Sylvia was arrested for robbery, reckless endangerment, and assaults. When
(15:44):
they got to the police station, Detective Dennis Dusac questioned
Sylvia about everything that transpired that night. Um. When he
arrested me, he handcuffed me to a chair for hours,
and he kept answering me what happened. And I told
him I did ever really know what happened. And I
(16:05):
was talking to him and I was scared and I
didn't know, you know, what to say or what to do.
And he wouldn't let me go to bathroom, let me
urinate on myself. Then, she says, Detective du Sac wrote
out a statement for her to sign. I kept telling
my head three children at home, and he kept saying, well, um,
if you sign this I'll let you go home, and
(16:27):
so I was like, but this is not what happened.
So he kept me to the chair and then um,
I kept falling asleep and he hit me with a
phone book is big thick um paperback phone book to
wake me up. He's like, sign this and we will
let you go. I signed the paper and I never
left prison after that interaction, Sylvia ended up being charged
(16:58):
with first degree murder on top of robbery, conspiracy, and
possession of instruments of a crime. Antoine and Aaron were
also charged with murder, robbery, and a host of other crimes.
The three of them went to trial on March twenty three,
and we're all tried together. The prosecutor was John Doyle.
(17:23):
His argument was that Sylvia ordered Antoine and Aaron to
kill both Burnetta and her son Albert. And Doyle developed
the series from Albert, who said that even though she
was unarmed, Sylvia ordered the hit on their lives. In fact,
because it was agreed that Sylvia was unarmed, Albert's statements
were the main reason prosecutors could even charge Sylvia with
(17:46):
murder in the first place. Prosecutor Doyle also presented sylvia
signed statement as well as one from Aaron Major. There's
no evidence that Antoine Blackman signed a statement, but the
defense counsel said that the two statements that were presented
were coerced. In fact, on the stand, both Antoine and
(18:07):
Aaron said that Sylvia did not have a gun and
did not order anyone to shoot. All three also contended
that Albert actually threatened them with a gun. First forensic
show that Burnetta was shot by two different guns. Although
accounts very the defense and prosecution agreed on one thing.
Sylvia did not have a gun and did not shoot anyone.
(18:36):
What was that like to see your mom in coughs
and and facing a murder trial. I mean, that's I
imagine it's really traumatizing. Yes, it was, um, you know,
not being able to touch her or talk to her
and seeing them question her. And for me most because
my grandmother was there and at the time, my grandmother
(18:59):
was starting to go through dementia, so it was really hard. Um.
I think that was the most for me watching my
grandmother go through it, because my grandmother would just burst
out in court, just stand up and scream and be like,
you don't know what you're doing or you don't know
what you're talking about and just let my daughter go
(19:23):
and and the things that you're saying, she didn't do that,
So yes, it was really tough. On April one, Sylvia,
along with Antoine and Aaron, was convicted of first degree murder.
Sixteen year old Penny was now in charge of taking
care of her younger siblings, and it was hard. I
(19:47):
would tell friends like far as school jobs, when they
would ask about my mother, I would say that my
mother still live in Bugia. So Pete who that did
not know that my mother was incocerated. And I'm gonna
be honest. It was that love hate relationship. Penny says
(20:10):
it's been difficult to visit her mom in prison over
the years, so to be honest, Um, as a kid,
we did go a lot. It was a group that
went up and they took the children all the time.
But as I got older, I stopped going because I
(20:31):
didn't like it at all. Um, I didn't like the
way it felt to me. I didn't like saying my
mother like that, So I really I really didn't. I
stopped going a lot. But now that she's an adult
with children, Penny wants her kids to have a relationship
with their grandma, so they visit her. It's the only
(20:54):
way for her to her it's relationship with them since
the fact, you know, she is a lifer, and unfortunately
we grew up and we had kids of our own,
and that's the only way she would have a bond
with them and see them m Meanwhile, Sylvia filed appeal
(21:23):
after appeal to no avail. Neither of her two attorneys
were effective. Sylvia's trial attorney, Michael Wallace, failed to file
her appeal in a timely manner, so he was unable
to appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Eventually, her
rights to appeal were reinstated and she got a new attorney,
James Bruno, But the appeals that Bruno filed were all
(21:45):
denied and exhausted, leaving Sylvia very few options for release,
and Bruno had issues of his own. He was later
suspended from practicing law for violating rules of professional conduct. Meanwhile,
Antoine Blackman was released from prison on his direct appeal.
In One of the tragedies in this particular case is
(22:07):
that she never had adequate legal representation. This is Dr
Jill McCorkle. I'm a professor of sociology and criminology at
Villanova University, and I'm also the founder and the executive
director of the Philadelphia Justice Project for Women and Girls.
Dr McCorkle studies how mass incarceration intersects with gender and poverty.
(22:28):
She was looking into another similar case, a woman who
is not the shooter in a crime and also got
a life sentence when she came across Sylvia's case. There
are a number of women with similar kinds of scenarios
where it's the principal offender is a man. She says,
women are often at a unique disadvantage in this situation.
(22:52):
They're unable to cooperate with police because usually they're scared
of retaliatory violence and um, and then you know, police
and prosecutors engage in a malicious prosecution. And so that's
really how I got to Sylvia. Dr McCorkle believes that
Sylvia would have and should have been treated as a witness,
(23:13):
and that it was Sylvia's hesitancy to cooperate with police
that got her the murder charge. Remember when the police
asked Sylvia what she knew about the crime and if
she knew Antoine and Aaron, she said no, I was scared,
and I was like, what did they go do something
to my girls? If I could tell on him what
had happened, I was scared, like, I got three girls
(23:35):
at home that's alone, and I was afraid that if
I told on him, like it's something might happened to
my daughters. Dr McCorkle says that a lot of women
like Sylvia, who are vulnerable because of poverty, precarious lifestyles,
drug and alcohol abuse, and her domestic violence, are not
in a position where they can cooperate with police and prosecutors.
(23:59):
It puts them at risk. It often puts family members
at risk, and police and prosecutors, I'll say, I'll be
as as generous as possible misinterpret that hesitancy, and I
think in some cases honestly take that unwillingness to cooperate
(24:20):
as an indicator of criminal culpability and then hit them
with elevated charges to try to force their hand. And so,
you know, you can really look at these cases and
see women sort of situated between street violence and then
what I refer to as state violence, so that they're
(24:41):
sort of taking their chances either way. And those who
are particularly vulnerable to violence and retaliation are saying, all right, well,
you know, I'm gonna take my chances at trial because
it's better than taking my chances on the street. Sylvia
took those chances and they didn't land in her favor.
Albert's contention that Sylvia ordered the hit ended up being
(25:04):
her downfall, and Dr McCorkle believes that Albert testified to
this because of pressure he faced at the time. He
had an open drug charge, and after he offered up
this information, he was able to plead a very favorable
and short sentence to his own case, even though he
never initially said that Sylvia ordered the shooting. But Dr
(25:27):
McCorkle believes that Albert's testimony about Sylvia during the trial
is actually one of the most preposterous things about Sylvia's case.
When Sylvia is initially arrested, she's arrested for robbery, um,
maybe simple assaulter, aggravated assaults, nothing about murder. So even
(25:49):
when the police pick her up, there's no you know,
kind of framing of Sylvia as somehow this you know,
criminal master mind or or street heavy ordering the execution
of the people in this house. Um. Now, Albert testifies
to that, and I think probably does so, because that's
(26:12):
the only way that prosecutors can can hook Sylvia on
in any meaningful way. They need some kind of statement, um,
you know, going directly to her culpability. Dr McCorkle has
studied crack cocaine markets in depth. She says knowing their
structure is key to understanding the forces that led to
Sylvia's conviction. These markets are organized hierarchically and by gender.
(26:38):
The you know, Sylvia is in her thirties at the
time this goes down, and so one of the things
that prosecutors are doing at trial is saying, here's this
woman in our thirties and she's got these two you know, teenagers,
so she's the adult, so therefore, you know, she must
have been in charge of this. But that's not how
(27:00):
crack cocaine markets work. These markets and and particularly the
responsibility for retaliation and the responsibility for collecting debt is
men's responsibility, so you know, sort of gender segregation in
the drug market, so you know, women aren't the enforcers
in these markets, that's men. Even though Antoine Blackman was
(27:26):
eventually released from prison, Dr McCorkle believes him to be
the likeliest shooter in this case. The mythology on the
street is, yeah, you give a teenager the gun because
they're not going to get as lengthy as sentence as
an adult Wood, Which is the other reason that it's
entirely plausible to me that blackman is the shooter. He's
(27:47):
the juvenile, and so that's certainly not unusual. It was
the norm to have a juvenile b the shooter. So
I can see major handing that gun to black men.
Sylvia was left with a life without parole sentence, and
(28:10):
now with her appeals exhausted, where we're really left here
is commutation. And I think she deserves commutation on her merits,
you know, without even looking into the kind of specifics
of all, right, well, how culpable was she in this
particular case. But I think on her own merits she
deserves to have a sentence commutation, which would release her
(28:35):
from life in prison without possibility of parole. It would
allow her to go home to her family. Sylvia has
made the best of her time in prison. However, She's gotten,
you know, multiple certifications, and she's got three decades in Certainly,
certainly Sylvia has done everything that we would expect someone
to do over the duration of such a long period
(28:58):
of time. Sylvia goes to church for weekly services, Bible
study and prayer. She has continued to develop her computer skills,
and she studies entrepreneurship. But she especially enjoys being a
certified pure specialist. Train us to like sit down and uh,
(29:21):
to listen to people, you know, so it's not like
to tell them what to do, but just to be
listening and caring and helping them to find their only answer.
And it makes you feel good. Also, I try to
help like a lot of the young people. UM, I
try to guide them. I try to talk to them
a lot about being here and going home and making
(29:45):
a change in their life. Sylvia loves doing this and
this is what she wants to continue to do. Dr
McCorkle has also offered her a position with the Philadelphia
Justice Project for Women and Girls. When she gets out,
we're gonna have her be our ambassador and UM and
do a lot of outreach to other incarcerated women and
(30:07):
UM and certainly, you know, uh, there's there's no better
expert both with respect to these kinds of prosecutions as
well as uh, you know, an expert in in what
it means to be a woman, to be a mother,
to be a grandmother. Navigating decades in prison, I feel like,
(30:28):
after thirty one years and here that I've came to
know myself. I had so much that I want to
give back. I want to be able to go out
and to help young people. I want to be able
to tell my story that helps some young girl know
that no matter what happened in her life, no matter
(30:51):
she was molested, no matter if somebody you know let
her down the wrong road to get on drugs or
or to drink, that she can change. Sylvia is now
sixty four and in declining health. Among her ailments is
sciatic nerve damage, arthritis, and her neated disks, all of
(31:13):
which caused her daily pain. It is costing Pennsylvania taxpayers
so much to lock up a prison population that them
are fifty and older, and it's just incredibly expensive, and
so regardless of sort of where you're situated politically, there's
(31:33):
a recognition that we have got to get aging people
out of prison. Well, Sylvia knows she's not directly responsible
for Brunetta's death, she still feels regret over what happened,
(31:55):
and I'm just so so sorry, so everyone that I
heard yes for a paid did I course, I'm very
sorry for that. I wish I could take it all back.
I wish I could go back to that and two
(32:17):
things all different. I would just wish I could just
go back. In July, Dr McCorkle submitted a letter to
(32:39):
the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons urging them to grant Sylvia connutation.
Sylvia's case is up for review in October two. She
needs a majority of a five person panel to move
to the next round of voting, where she will need
all five votes to be free. If you'd like to
(33:01):
show your support for Sylvia, go to free Sylvia Boykin
dot com to sign a petition calling for her commutation.
Next time, Unwrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Troy Burner, you
know I didn't have enough and do with it, so
you know, and they're not gonna be the final biden
(33:22):
to say I had not to do with it, so
you know. I held onto that. You know, that belief
where they say the truth set you free. Thank you
for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support
your local innocence organizations and go to the links in
(33:43):
our bio to see how you can help. I'd like
to thank our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wurtis,
as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson,
story editor Sonya Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne
and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by
three time OSCAR nominated composer Ja Ralph. Be sure to
(34:05):
follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at
Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at Wrongful Conviction, as
well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms,
you can also follow me on both Instagram and Twitter
at Maggie Freeling. Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a
production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
(34:27):
Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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