April 11, 2025 • 39 mins
Christopher Muse, a retired MA Superior Court judge shares the tale of Bobby Joe Leaster, a man wrongfully convicted for a murder he did not commit, who spent nearly 16 years in a MA state prison before the father son legal team of Christopher Muse and Robert Muse won his freedom. Chris joined us to share this inspiring tale firsthand having fought to win Leaster's freedom. This is a case that thwarted the reinstitution of capital punishment in Massachusetts during the 1990s, and unlocked compensation opportunities for people who were unjustly incarcerated.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
With Dan Ray WBS Constance Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Well, I don't know if you can still hear me,
but that is not a top Chicago White Sox team
they're playing tonight. This is a little discouraging.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And not only that, Dan, but the error bug is
biting the Red Sox again. What was supposed to be
a good defensive team so far has not shown that.
I think they've got about three errors already in this game.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I'm aware of that. You know there's a possibility I
may have to go in and help Korra manage this team,
and you couldn't do any You couldn't do any worse, Dan,
I don't think. Well, certainly not tonight. Certainly not tonight.
But I mean I talked to him every once in
a while and try to explain some strategies to him.
But I think I may need to take a leave
of absence here for the station.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
It's not where, it's not working, Dan.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Could you cover it, cover for me for a couple
of months while I get these guys back. I will,
I will, Okay, I would appreciate that. You know, I'm
not deserting Bez, but I have to do something for
the Red Sox, and you know you're a team You're
a team player, Dan. I'm a team player and I
want everybody to be a team player. That's exactly what
I'm talking about. Hell, you've read my mind, you know
(01:09):
me too. Well, thank you, my friend. I really appreciate
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
(01:32):
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,
(01:55):
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?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
And please call me Chris. I love being a judge.
I retired. It means I can talk more freely and
I can make some extra money now, So Chris is
much better place for me at the age of seventy plus.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
So right, I'm still trying to figure out how to
make extra money. But I talk freely every night. So
that's the one thing.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
You would have, the silence you never had, the silence
I had. But I, first of all, I want to
thank you so much for inviting me to speak with
you into your audience. You know, well you know how
important it was to me and my family, and as
you know, and I appreciate this fact, it was so
important to the Boston community at Lodge. So it's a
(02:57):
thrill for me to be here with you tonight.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, the title is interesting. We will use the title
as the gateway to the to the conversation. The title
Justice undergd the the subtitle how Faith, Hope and Charity
freed an innocent man and help save a thousand lives.
We'll get into the subtitle, but the title Justice under
God actually comes from your high school, Boston College High School,
(03:20):
which of course was the sworn enemy of my high school,
Boston Latin School back in our days in high school.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yes, and and and and I want to let you
know that that we have Rob Prochbaut right now with
you and me in respect of what with the Eagles
and you guys were the what we were the wolf pack?
Wolf pack. That's it shouldn't be. I was there for
three years. I shouldn't forget those things.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, well, oh, so you shot you, you talked, you
took the short course seventh, eighth, and ninth grades.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
No, no, I talked you for three years.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I believe.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Yeah, they called me a junior master. I mean that's yeah.
It was very dated. It was great, Oh it was.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It was very dated, even for the day. It was
very dated. So justice under God is a phrase that
emanates from BC High School. It's called it's short for jug.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Right, you have friends at BC High that and and
they were They were probably of not bad character, but
sometimes mischievous, and Judge would be called detention and discipline
for any any of the kids at BC HID that
got out of one. In fact, it was a system
JUG for just about every Jesuit high school on the
(04:32):
East Coast, and it was an acronym for justice under God.
So you have justice more than I got more justice
under God during my senior year when I was very
restless than any other senior in the class. And I
think I held the record for about ten years. But
but I.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I want I want to I want to talk about
the title of the book, Justice Undergoden This this is
a case. You were a newly minted or relatively minted lawyer,
your dad. It was a legal legend here in Boston
for many many years. And after graduating from Suffolk Law School,
(05:11):
working doing that at nights at night, which is always
tough because you were teaching in the Boston school system,
you found your your work in life. And one of
the first cases that landed on your desk, courtesy of
your dad was the Bobby Joe Leister case. And it
turned it turned out to be a huge case, and
(05:32):
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
(05:53):
a missed a conviction, that was a that is a
miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
So you know, it goes right back to the the
starting off point was I finished, I finished teaching, and
I was given a job as a as a public
defender in the Marldon Courts. That fortunately gave me the
right to have a private practice to supplement. And that
was how I ended up in my father's law office
on my first day of being a public defender the
(06:17):
late afternoon, and I was trying to clear space so
I could, you know, work out of his office and
they and I told him, I said, listen, I'm getting
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
(06:37):
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?
(06:58):
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
(07:21):
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
(07:43):
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,
(08:06):
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,
(08:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, we're going to get into the story. We're going
to have some folks join us. Those of you who
know that Bobby Joe Leister case, you're more than welcome
to call and ask questions. It was a case that
came down at a different time here in Massachusetts. It
may sound like incredible. There are people who are inside
the prison walls who are in fact innocent, And I
(09:05):
always emphasize Christ for people to understand the difference between
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
(09:26):
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
(09:49):
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
(10:13):
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
(10:36):
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
(10:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on w b
Z Boston's news.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Radio talk with former Massachusetts superior Court judge for many years,
a defense lawyer, criminal defense lawyer. His book Justice under God,
the story of his and his family. His dad was
a very well respected iconic lawyer here in the Greater
Boston area for decades himself. His dad a World War
(11:37):
Two veteran who had quite a military career as well,
which is incorporated into the book. But they represented the
young man Bobby Joe Lista, who was arrested at the
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
(11:58):
great book. Chris on Us is Michael Albano from a
mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts. Mister mayor, former Governor's Council.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
How are you, sir, Good evening, be a good to
be with you and in Justice Muse. Thanks for having Mike.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Mike nice to hear you too. Great.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Let me let me, let me let the two of
you explain. We're going to jump ahead a little bit here.
After many appeals within the court system which fell on
deaf ears, I hope I'm characterizing that correctly. Chris. You
decided that the better tact might be seek a commutation,
(12:38):
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
(12:58):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Yeah, let me let me get let me get to
another very important waypoint, as we call it. In nineteen
eighty five, we'd exhausted all of our appeals. We've been
out and down the federal courts. We had three times
in front of the Supreme Judicial Court. We kept getting
pushed back because the courts are reluctant to overturn these
kinds of convictions back in the day, and I went
out to see Bobby and I told them the bad news,
(13:38):
and he said, explain to me, why did they do
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,
(13:58):
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
(14:18):
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,
(14:40):
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
(15:02):
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
(15:25):
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
(15:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
We got a couple of minutes here before the newsbreak.
We may have to pick it up on the other side.
But again, I know a little bit about commutations from
the Salvadi case. The NT easy tell us some what
advice you gave Chris and how he followed it.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
Sure well, you have to also remember that not only
did a petitioner have to come before us and express remorse,
and even if they got through the Advisory Board of Pardons,
then it had to go to the governor. You may
recall the Governor Ducoccus was in office in the nineteen eighties,
but he had been beaten by ed King in nineteen
(16:45):
seventy eight, and a lot of it, a lot of
that election revolved around the fact that Governor Ducaccus issued
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
(17:08):
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
(17:29):
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.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
We met with the.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
Individual members of the Parole Board and the case was
so compelling that we had a hearing and we were
prepared to issue a favorable recommendation to the governor.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And this is in the nineteen eighties. This is before
the Willie Horton debicle that caused Mike Tacacas to stop
giving commutations after that debiclet this was this was when
he was returned to office, but before the Willie Horton case.
But it still was a difficult blessing to get from
a governor. But again, you I know, were important on
(18:18):
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.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
If I recall, well, there's no question about it, and
you know very well dealing with Doe Salvadi and Peter
Lamoni and Lewis Greco and Henry Timilio, which is a
very tragic case of Massachusetts history. But it's political. It
does get political. It's very legalistic as well. You have
to make your case before the courts had exhaust all
administrative remedies, legal remedies, before you come to the Advisory
(18:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And if I'm not mistaken, and I don't want to
go too far in this, depending upon what you want
to say, I believe that some members of the Governor's
Council have at times been actually threatened by law enforcement
officials or people perhaps who are no longer law enforcement officials.
If you get my.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Drift, Well, that has happened, Dan, That's absolutely happened. But
the Chris's point as well is the media played a
very important role. And if it wasn't for you, Dan, righty,
I'm not sure Joe Salbody would have ever been released
from prison. But the favorable media that Salvadi got and
Bobby Joe Lister got through Chrismus in the Boston Globe
(19:41):
played a very big part in the release of Leister,
and it was critical to this whole process.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I call it the court of public opinion, and Chris
was very wise to enlist your advice and counsel. Let
me do this, gentlemen, if it's okay, I got to
take a quick break for news to come back. Mike,
if you could stay with us for a moment or two,
I'd appreciate it. And Chris muse Obviously, I want to
get to the story. I want to briefly touch upon
(20:10):
the frustrations because they don't want to gloss over it.
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
(20:30):
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
(20:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
It's Nice Eye with Dan Ray on Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
We really have two guests. Chris Muse, former Superit Court
judge here in Massachusetts, who's written a book Justice under God,
All Faith, Hope and Charity Freed And and how how faith,
hope and charity freed an innocent man and helped saved
save a thousand lives talking about his client, Bobby joe Leister,
who spent fifteen years in prison for murder he didn't commit. Chris,
(21:33):
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
(21:54):
that he just didn't do.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
He's a long involved one, and I'll I'll try to
give it kind of quickly.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Particularly interested in the suggestive identification.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
Yeah, that's the most important part. There was a robbery
September twenty seventh in Cardman Square small variety store, the
Talbot Variety, and two guys walked in and they bullied
the woman behind the stand, Missus Whiteside, and her husband
came out because they had a gun and he wanted money.
(22:29):
And the husband came out saw them attacking his wife,
and he took up a glass or a cup and
smashed it on the one of the assailants who shot him,
grabbed the money and ran and he was killed instantly.
The police came and they gave a description over the
(22:50):
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
(23:10):
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,
(23:32):
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
(23:53):
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
(24:14):
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
(24:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Now, yes, essentially, we're just saying she was brought there
by the police in intentionally knowing an events that that
was going.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
To be there. Yeah, she she she. The trial didn't
indicate the certitude of his death, but later on, later
on we found out from witnesses that one hundred percent
she she she she knew he was saying, they took
a run, they took him out with the cup with
the sheet over said, in any.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Effect, they in effect they did a one person lineup.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
They did it in the worst of circumstances. The woman,
the woman had especially seen her husband pronounced dead. The
police were giving all these indications and in order to
be able to unravel that identification a trial, well, it
was impossible because Bobby's lawyer was not that competent, to
be honest with you, and in any event, uh, you
(25:47):
asked me how we were able to unravel it and
keep up heads above water. Is that we just would.
We were assiduous, We were relentless about getting all of
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
(26:09):
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
(26:30):
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,
(26:53):
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.
(27:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well, I know. But the point that I wanted to
make is that as I read the book today and
refamiliarize myself with your case, any lawyer I should get
this book to read it just to understand. You used
the word assiduous, and that's exactly you would you folks,
were you got to be a dog on a bone
on these sorts of cases. Uh, And you certainly were
dogs on a bone. You were not going to give up.
(27:47):
You kept digging and digging and digging, and you know,
to carry the metaphor you you weren't going to bury
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.
(28:09):
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
(28:30):
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
(28:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
You're on Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm w b Z,
Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Talking with Chris Muse, former Superior Court judge here in Massachusetts, who,
along with his dad, Bob Muse, a lawyer for many
many years, a legendary lawyer in Boston, along with his son,
worked for many years to free a man named Bobby
Joe Least many of you have heard about the case.
You can read about it in a new book by Chris,
(29:38):
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
(30:04):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
Left, and I'm going to give it. Yeah, I got
first of all, say that Bobby came out of reform
Alabama segregated itself, unblemish record, A happy kid came to
Boston for freedom, you know, for the liberty that he
thought he was going to get it till he didn't
have it anymore. But when he spent the first night
(30:41):
in Walpole Prison, he describes he was putting the cell.
It was doc and he cried for his mother, and
he prayed to God, and he had that indomitable fate
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,
(31:01):
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
(31:22):
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
(31:43):
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
(32:03):
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
(32:25):
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.
(32:45):
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
(33:07):
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
(33:31):
was there to give protection during the services. So I
mean he was just remarkable.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, Chris, when you get a quick comment from Michael Obonam. Mike,
I know that as the mayor of Springfield you were
dealing with a lot of these issues as well. How
important is it in your mind you the vote that
you cast for his commutation, How important is in your mind,
particularly with the success and the work that he did
all these years in Boston.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Well, when I was mayor, I brought Bobby Joe came
out to Springfield to do a press conference with us
because we were opposed to the death penalty at the time.
This is probably nineteen ninety seven. You may recall the
State Senate passed a version approving of the death penalty
by a voter twenty six to fourteen. It also passed
(34:18):
the House of Representatives, and Governor Weld would have signed
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
(34:39):
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
(35:00):
why we don't have a death penalty today.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Well, that fight for the death penalty came in the
in the wake of the killing of the young Curly
boy though those two horrific human beings who kidnapped him.
Then we could have a we could have a long
conversation about that case. But uh, you know, and and
also Bob Curley, the young boy's dad, I think, also
(35:24):
came out against the death penalty at that time, which
was a remarkable show of strength and I know I
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
(35:46):
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.
Speaker 6 (35:58):
Go ahead, Joe, Then could I call the twentieth hour?
Since I called the nine o'clock hour, you.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Always get a haul passing the twentieth hour. Go ahead,
talk about question.
Speaker 6 (36:08):
My question is I don't know if the judge Chris
wants to answer this or not, but does he think
that Karen Reid has been framed?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I don't want to go to the Karen read case. Joe.
We'll talk that about that in the twentieth hour. Thanks
very much, Mark and Austin. Mark, if you'd like to
join the conversation very quickly, go right ahead, yup. Then
it goes Mark. We lost Mark, okay, take Joe was done?
Please Rob, Thank you very much. Chris. I just want
(36:40):
to read a little bit of a technical issue there.
I'm sorry, and again bring in the other case. The
book Justice Undergod is available. It's on Amazon. How else
can people get it?
Speaker 4 (36:54):
I think that's the way. I think Bonds and Noble
has a tool. But if you just go on to
it's not in the stores because it's this is a
new way of doing it. But if you don't mind
giving a little shout out I'm dedicating every one of
my royalties for the next year to the New England
Innocence Project. And I have a I have a boutique
publisher if you want that that that put put the
(37:15):
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
(37:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
It's just it's a great book. And by the way,
the characters who you were in front of, Federal Judge
McNaught was a professor Binet b you, as was Paul Leacos,
the former state Supreme Court justice here in Massachusetts. It's
a great book, uh, and it will teach everybody a
(38:16):
lot more about I think the criminal justice system and
how once you're convicted. We all learned in law school
what the standard of proof is to convict someone all
the elements of crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. There
is no standard. There is no standard to free an
innocent man, and you were able to free an innocent man.
(38:39):
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.
(39:01):
I want to thank you both for what you've done well.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
Thank you for having me again.
Speaker 5 (39:04):
Thank you to me with you, Jen, Mike.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Great to talk to you again as well. It's an
amazing story, folks. It's available Justice under God by Christopher Muse.
You will learn so much about the case, but you'll
learn more about the criminal justice system and the concept
of finality, which is I think still relied upon much
too often by appellate court justices. But that's my own bias.
(39:30):
When we come back right after the newscast, we are
going to talk about home remodeling. We have a design
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
With Dan Ray WBS Constance Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Well, I don't know if you can still hear me,
but that is not a top Chicago White Sox team
they're playing tonight. This is a little discouraging.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And not only that, Dan, but the error bug is
biting the Red Sox again. What was supposed to be
a good defensive team so far has not shown that.
I think they've got about three errors already in this game.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I'm aware of that. You know there's a possibility I
may have to go in and help Korra manage this team,
and you couldn't do any You couldn't do any worse, Dan,
I don't think. Well, certainly not tonight. Certainly not tonight.
But I mean I talked to him every once in
a while and try to explain some strategies to him.
But I think I may need to take a leave
of absence here for the station.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
It's not where, it's not working, Dan.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Could you cover it, cover for me for a couple
of months while I get these guys back. I will,
I will, Okay, I would appreciate that. You know, I'm
not deserting Bez, but I have to do something for
the Red Sox, and you know you're a team You're
a team player, Dan. I'm a team player and I
want everybody to be a team player. That's exactly what
I'm talking about. Hell, you've read my mind, you know
(01:09):
me too. Well, thank you, my friend. I really appreciate
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
(01:32):
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,
(01:55):
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?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
And please call me Chris. I love being a judge.
I retired. It means I can talk more freely and
I can make some extra money now, So Chris is
much better place for me at the age of seventy plus.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
So right, I'm still trying to figure out how to
make extra money. But I talk freely every night. So
that's the one thing.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
You would have, the silence you never had, the silence
I had. But I, first of all, I want to
thank you so much for inviting me to speak with
you into your audience. You know, well you know how
important it was to me and my family, and as
you know, and I appreciate this fact, it was so
important to the Boston community at Lodge. So it's a
(02:57):
thrill for me to be here with you tonight.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, the title is interesting. We will use the title
as the gateway to the to the conversation. The title
Justice undergd the the subtitle how Faith, Hope and Charity
freed an innocent man and help save a thousand lives.
We'll get into the subtitle, but the title Justice under
God actually comes from your high school, Boston College High School,
(03:20):
which of course was the sworn enemy of my high school,
Boston Latin School back in our days in high school.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yes, and and and and I want to let you
know that that we have Rob Prochbaut right now with
you and me in respect of what with the Eagles
and you guys were the what we were the wolf pack?
Wolf pack. That's it shouldn't be. I was there for
three years. I shouldn't forget those things.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, well, oh, so you shot you, you talked, you
took the short course seventh, eighth, and ninth grades.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
No, no, I talked you for three years.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I believe.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Yeah, they called me a junior master. I mean that's yeah.
It was very dated. It was great, Oh it was.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It was very dated, even for the day. It was
very dated. So justice under God is a phrase that
emanates from BC High School. It's called it's short for jug.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Right, you have friends at BC High that and and
they were They were probably of not bad character, but
sometimes mischievous, and Judge would be called detention and discipline
for any any of the kids at BC HID that
got out of one. In fact, it was a system
JUG for just about every Jesuit high school on the
(04:32):
East Coast, and it was an acronym for justice under God.
So you have justice more than I got more justice
under God during my senior year when I was very
restless than any other senior in the class. And I
think I held the record for about ten years. But
but I.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I want I want to I want to talk about
the title of the book, Justice Undergoden This this is
a case. You were a newly minted or relatively minted lawyer,
your dad. It was a legal legend here in Boston
for many many years. And after graduating from Suffolk Law School,
(05:11):
working doing that at nights at night, which is always
tough because you were teaching in the Boston school system,
you found your your work in life. And one of
the first cases that landed on your desk, courtesy of
your dad was the Bobby Joe Leister case. And it
turned it turned out to be a huge case, and
(05:32):
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
(05:53):
a missed a conviction, that was a that is a
miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
So you know, it goes right back to the the
starting off point was I finished, I finished teaching, and
I was given a job as a as a public
defender in the Marldon Courts. That fortunately gave me the
right to have a private practice to supplement. And that
was how I ended up in my father's law office
on my first day of being a public defender the
(06:17):
late afternoon, and I was trying to clear space so
I could, you know, work out of his office and
they and I told him, I said, listen, I'm getting
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
(06:37):
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?
(06:58):
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
(07:21):
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
(07:43):
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,
(08:06):
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,
(08:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, we're going to get into the story. We're going
to have some folks join us. Those of you who
know that Bobby Joe Leister case, you're more than welcome
to call and ask questions. It was a case that
came down at a different time here in Massachusetts. It
may sound like incredible. There are people who are inside
the prison walls who are in fact innocent, And I
(09:05):
always emphasize Christ for people to understand the difference between
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
(09:26):
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
(09:49):
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
(10:13):
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
(10:36):
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
(10:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on w b
Z Boston's news.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Radio talk with former Massachusetts superior Court judge for many years,
a defense lawyer, criminal defense lawyer. His book Justice under God,
the story of his and his family. His dad was
a very well respected iconic lawyer here in the Greater
Boston area for decades himself. His dad a World War
(11:37):
Two veteran who had quite a military career as well,
which is incorporated into the book. But they represented the
young man Bobby Joe Lista, who was arrested at the
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
(11:58):
great book. Chris on Us is Michael Albano from a
mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts. Mister mayor, former Governor's Council.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
How are you, sir, Good evening, be a good to
be with you and in Justice Muse. Thanks for having Mike.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Mike nice to hear you too. Great.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Let me let me, let me let the two of
you explain. We're going to jump ahead a little bit here.
After many appeals within the court system which fell on
deaf ears, I hope I'm characterizing that correctly. Chris. You
decided that the better tact might be seek a commutation,
(12:38):
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
(12:58):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Yeah, let me let me get let me get to
another very important waypoint, as we call it. In nineteen
eighty five, we'd exhausted all of our appeals. We've been
out and down the federal courts. We had three times
in front of the Supreme Judicial Court. We kept getting
pushed back because the courts are reluctant to overturn these
kinds of convictions back in the day, and I went
out to see Bobby and I told them the bad news,
(13:38):
and he said, explain to me, why did they do
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,
(13:58):
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
(14:18):
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,
(14:40):
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
(15:02):
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
(15:25):
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
(15:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
We got a couple of minutes here before the newsbreak.
We may have to pick it up on the other side.
But again, I know a little bit about commutations from
the Salvadi case. The NT easy tell us some what
advice you gave Chris and how he followed it.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
Sure well, you have to also remember that not only
did a petitioner have to come before us and express remorse,
and even if they got through the Advisory Board of Pardons,
then it had to go to the governor. You may
recall the Governor Ducoccus was in office in the nineteen eighties,
but he had been beaten by ed King in nineteen
(16:45):
seventy eight, and a lot of it, a lot of
that election revolved around the fact that Governor Ducaccus issued
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
(17:08):
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
(17:29):
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.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
We met with the.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
Individual members of the Parole Board and the case was
so compelling that we had a hearing and we were
prepared to issue a favorable recommendation to the governor.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And this is in the nineteen eighties. This is before
the Willie Horton debicle that caused Mike Tacacas to stop
giving commutations after that debiclet this was this was when
he was returned to office, but before the Willie Horton case.
But it still was a difficult blessing to get from
a governor. But again, you I know, were important on
(18:18):
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.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
If I recall, well, there's no question about it, and
you know very well dealing with Doe Salvadi and Peter
Lamoni and Lewis Greco and Henry Timilio, which is a
very tragic case of Massachusetts history. But it's political. It
does get political. It's very legalistic as well. You have
to make your case before the courts had exhaust all
administrative remedies, legal remedies, before you come to the Advisory
(18:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And if I'm not mistaken, and I don't want to
go too far in this, depending upon what you want
to say, I believe that some members of the Governor's
Council have at times been actually threatened by law enforcement
officials or people perhaps who are no longer law enforcement officials.
If you get my.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Drift, Well, that has happened, Dan, That's absolutely happened. But
the Chris's point as well is the media played a
very important role. And if it wasn't for you, Dan, righty,
I'm not sure Joe Salbody would have ever been released
from prison. But the favorable media that Salvadi got and
Bobby Joe Lister got through Chrismus in the Boston Globe
(19:41):
played a very big part in the release of Leister,
and it was critical to this whole process.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I call it the court of public opinion, and Chris
was very wise to enlist your advice and counsel. Let
me do this, gentlemen, if it's okay, I got to
take a quick break for news to come back. Mike,
if you could stay with us for a moment or two,
I'd appreciate it. And Chris muse Obviously, I want to
get to the story. I want to briefly touch upon
(20:10):
the frustrations because they don't want to gloss over it.
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
(20:30):
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
(20:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
It's Nice Eye with Dan Ray on Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
We really have two guests. Chris Muse, former Superit Court
judge here in Massachusetts, who's written a book Justice under God,
All Faith, Hope and Charity Freed And and how how faith,
hope and charity freed an innocent man and helped saved
save a thousand lives talking about his client, Bobby joe Leister,
who spent fifteen years in prison for murder he didn't commit. Chris,
(21:33):
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
(21:54):
that he just didn't do.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
He's a long involved one, and I'll I'll try to
give it kind of quickly.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Particularly interested in the suggestive identification.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
Yeah, that's the most important part. There was a robbery
September twenty seventh in Cardman Square small variety store, the
Talbot Variety, and two guys walked in and they bullied
the woman behind the stand, Missus Whiteside, and her husband
came out because they had a gun and he wanted money.
(22:29):
And the husband came out saw them attacking his wife,
and he took up a glass or a cup and
smashed it on the one of the assailants who shot him,
grabbed the money and ran and he was killed instantly.
The police came and they gave a description over the
(22:50):
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
(23:10):
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,
(23:32):
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
(23:53):
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
(24:14):
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
(24:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Now, yes, essentially, we're just saying she was brought there
by the police in intentionally knowing an events that that
was going.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
To be there. Yeah, she she she. The trial didn't
indicate the certitude of his death, but later on, later
on we found out from witnesses that one hundred percent
she she she she knew he was saying, they took
a run, they took him out with the cup with
the sheet over said, in any.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Effect, they in effect they did a one person lineup.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
They did it in the worst of circumstances. The woman,
the woman had especially seen her husband pronounced dead. The
police were giving all these indications and in order to
be able to unravel that identification a trial, well, it
was impossible because Bobby's lawyer was not that competent, to
be honest with you, and in any event, uh, you
(25:47):
asked me how we were able to unravel it and
keep up heads above water. Is that we just would.
We were assiduous, We were relentless about getting all of
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
(26:09):
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
(26:30):
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,
(26:53):
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.
(27:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well, I know. But the point that I wanted to
make is that as I read the book today and
refamiliarize myself with your case, any lawyer I should get
this book to read it just to understand. You used
the word assiduous, and that's exactly you would you folks,
were you got to be a dog on a bone
on these sorts of cases. Uh, And you certainly were
dogs on a bone. You were not going to give up.
(27:47):
You kept digging and digging and digging, and you know,
to carry the metaphor you you weren't going to bury
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.
(28:09):
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
(28:30):
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
(28:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
You're on Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm w b Z,
Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Talking with Chris Muse, former Superior Court judge here in Massachusetts, who,
along with his dad, Bob Muse, a lawyer for many
many years, a legendary lawyer in Boston, along with his son,
worked for many years to free a man named Bobby
Joe Least many of you have heard about the case.
You can read about it in a new book by Chris,
(29:38):
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
(30:04):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
Left, and I'm going to give it. Yeah, I got
first of all, say that Bobby came out of reform
Alabama segregated itself, unblemish record, A happy kid came to
Boston for freedom, you know, for the liberty that he
thought he was going to get it till he didn't
have it anymore. But when he spent the first night
(30:41):
in Walpole Prison, he describes he was putting the cell.
It was doc and he cried for his mother, and
he prayed to God, and he had that indomitable fate
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,
(31:01):
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
(31:22):
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
(31:43):
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
(32:03):
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
(32:25):
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.
(32:45):
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
(33:07):
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
(33:31):
was there to give protection during the services. So I
mean he was just remarkable.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, Chris, when you get a quick comment from Michael Obonam. Mike,
I know that as the mayor of Springfield you were
dealing with a lot of these issues as well. How
important is it in your mind you the vote that
you cast for his commutation, How important is in your mind,
particularly with the success and the work that he did
all these years in Boston.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Well, when I was mayor, I brought Bobby Joe came
out to Springfield to do a press conference with us
because we were opposed to the death penalty at the time.
This is probably nineteen ninety seven. You may recall the
State Senate passed a version approving of the death penalty
by a voter twenty six to fourteen. It also passed
(34:18):
the House of Representatives, and Governor Weld would have signed
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
(34:39):
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
(35:00):
why we don't have a death penalty today.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Well, that fight for the death penalty came in the
in the wake of the killing of the young Curly
boy though those two horrific human beings who kidnapped him.
Then we could have a we could have a long
conversation about that case. But uh, you know, and and
also Bob Curley, the young boy's dad, I think, also
(35:24):
came out against the death penalty at that time, which
was a remarkable show of strength and I know I
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
(35:46):
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.
Speaker 6 (35:58):
Go ahead, Joe, Then could I call the twentieth hour?
Since I called the nine o'clock hour, you.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Always get a haul passing the twentieth hour. Go ahead,
talk about question.
Speaker 6 (36:08):
My question is I don't know if the judge Chris
wants to answer this or not, but does he think
that Karen Reid has been framed?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I don't want to go to the Karen read case. Joe.
We'll talk that about that in the twentieth hour. Thanks
very much, Mark and Austin. Mark, if you'd like to
join the conversation very quickly, go right ahead, yup. Then
it goes Mark. We lost Mark, okay, take Joe was done?
Please Rob, Thank you very much. Chris. I just want
(36:40):
to read a little bit of a technical issue there.
I'm sorry, and again bring in the other case. The
book Justice Undergod is available. It's on Amazon. How else
can people get it?
Speaker 4 (36:54):
I think that's the way. I think Bonds and Noble
has a tool. But if you just go on to
it's not in the stores because it's this is a
new way of doing it. But if you don't mind
giving a little shout out I'm dedicating every one of
my royalties for the next year to the New England
Innocence Project. And I have a I have a boutique
publisher if you want that that that put put the
(37:15):
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
(37:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
It's just it's a great book. And by the way,
the characters who you were in front of, Federal Judge
McNaught was a professor Binet b you, as was Paul Leacos,
the former state Supreme Court justice here in Massachusetts. It's
a great book, uh, and it will teach everybody a
(38:16):
lot more about I think the criminal justice system and
how once you're convicted. We all learned in law school
what the standard of proof is to convict someone all
the elements of crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. There
is no standard. There is no standard to free an
innocent man, and you were able to free an innocent man.
(38:39):
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.
(39:01):
I want to thank you both for what you've done well.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
Thank you for having me again.
Speaker 5 (39:04):
Thank you to me with you, Jen, Mike.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Great to talk to you again as well. It's an
amazing story, folks. It's available Justice under God by Christopher Muse.
You will learn so much about the case, but you'll
learn more about the criminal justice system and the concept
of finality, which is I think still relied upon much
too often by appellate court justices. But that's my own bias.
(39:30):
When we come back right after the newscast, we are
going to talk about home remodeling. We have a design
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
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