Massachusetts man who spent decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit is awarded $13 million

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) — For the nearly three decades that he was behind bars, Michael Sullivan's mother and four siblings died, his girlfriend moved on with her life and he was badly beaten in several prison attacks.

All for a murder he long insisted he never committed.

Earlier this month, the 64-year-old Sullivan got a degree of justice when a Massachusetts jury ruled that he was innocent of the 1986 murder and robbery of Wilfred McGrath. He was awarded $13 million — though state regulations cap rewards at $1 million for wrongful convictions. The jury also found a state police chemist falsely testified at the trial though his testimony isn't what guaranteed Sullivan's conviction.

It's the latest in a string of convictions that have been overturned in the state in recent years.

“The most important thing is finding me innocent of the murder, expunging it from my record,” said Sullivan, speaking at the Framingham, Massachusetts, office of his lead attorney Michael Heineman. “The money, of course, will be very helpful to me.”

A spokesman for the Massachusetts attorney general said, "We respect the jury’s verdict and are evaluating whether an appeal is appropriate.”

Sullivan was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 after police say McGrath was robbed and beaten and his body dumped behind an abandoned supermarket.

Authorities zeroed in on Sullivan after they learned his sister had been out with McGrath the night before the murder and the two had gone to the apartment she shared with Sullivan. Another suspect in the murder, Gary Grace, implicated Sullivan and had his murder charges dropped. Grace testified at the trial that Sullivan was wearing a purple jacket the night of the murder and a former State Police chemist testified that he found blood on the jacket and a hair consistent with McGrath, not Sullivan's.

Sullivan was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Grace, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to accessory after a murder, and was sentenced to 6 years. Emil Petrla, who beat McGrath and helped dispose of his body, pleaded to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole but he died in prison.

“I couldn't believe I was convicted of murder,” Sullivan said, recalling prosecutors mentioned the purple jacket five times in their closing argument. “My mother was crying in the courtroom, my brother was crying. I was crying. It was very hard for me and my family.”

Prison would prove a nightmare for Sullivan. He had his nose almost bitten off in one attack and nearly lost an ear in another. And because he was a lifer, the prison system didn't allow him to take any classes to gain much-needed skills

“It’s very hard on a person, especially when you know you’re innocent,” Sullivan said. “And prison is a bad life, you know. Prison is a tough life.”

But in 2011, Sullivan's fortunes changed dramatically.

Sullivan's attorney requested DNA testing — which had not been available for the first trial — that found no blood on the coat. The testing also found substances on the coat did not contain McGrath's DNA and could not determine if the hair found on a jacket belonged to him.

Dana Curhan, a Boston attorney who represented Sullivan from 1992 until 2014 and pushed for the DNA testing, said Sullivan had always told him McGrath's blood wasn't on the jacket. But he was surprised to learn there wasn't any blood, which undermined the prosecutor's argument that Sullivan had beaten McGrath into a “blood pulp.”

“At the prosecutor's closing, he essentially said, 'Hey, if he wasn’t the one who did it, why did they find blood on both of cuffs of the jacket?'” Curhan said. “He kept repeating that. Now, we don’t have any blood nor a DNA match. You would expect someone doing what he was alleged to have done to be covered in blood. There is no blood. That really was the case.”

A new trial was ordered in 2012 and Sullivan was released in 2013. He spent the first six months on home confinement and had to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for years.

“When I walked out the front door, I was in an emotional state, he said.

In 2014, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld a decision to grant Sullivan a new trial and, in 2019, the state decided against retrying the case. At the time, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said it was virtually impossible for her office to successfully retry the case against Sullivan given the deaths of some witnesses, and a diminishment of the memories of other potential witnesses.

Sullivan admits he “shut down” after he was released and, to this day, struggles to function in a world that changed dramatically while he was in prison. Before he was arrested, he had worked at a peanut factory and had planned to go to school to become a truck driver and eventually work for his brother who owned a trucking company.

Instead, he left prison with no job prospects and little hope of finding work. He still can't use a computer and mostly helps his sister with odd jobs. His girlfriend, whom he had known since he was 12, would visit him for a decade in prison but eventually “had to go on with her life."

“I’m still really not adjusted to the outside world,” Sullivan said, adding that he spends much of his time with his Yorkshire terrier Buddy and pigeons that he keeps at his sister's house.

“It’s hard for me,” he said. “I don’t go nowhere. I’m scared all the time ... I'm pretty much a loner.”

Sullivan's sister, Donna Faria, said the family “never for a minute” believed that he killed McGrath. They were at the trial in support and would talk with Sullivan twice a week while he was in prison and visit him every few months.

But Faria laments all that Sullivan lost while in prison, noting he “never had kids, never married like the rest of us did.”

“If he didn’t have me, my brother would have been walking the streets like a lot of the homeless people,” Faria said. “It's almost like he don't trust people. If he is around his family, he feels safe. If he is not, he doesn’t.”

These days, Sullivan spends most of his time at Faria's house in Billerica, Massachusetts, and often does her family’s laundry like he did for fellow inmates while in prison. Despite the jury award, Sullivan doesn't expect that his life will change all that much.

Sullivan will treat himself to a new truck but said he wants to save most of the money to ensure his nieces and nephews have what they need when they turn 21. Sullivan hasn't been getting any therapy for the hardship he endured but his attorney Heineman said he plans to ask the court, as part of the judgment, to provide him with therapy and educational services.

“They'll have money. That will make me very happy,” he said. “The most important thing is my nieces and nephews — taking care of them.”

Michael Sullivan, 64, of Lowell, Mass., who was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 and spend years in jail before being ruled innocent, displays one of his pigeons while speaking with a reporter from The Associated Press, at the home of his sister, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Billerica, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Michael Sullivan, 64, of Lowell, Mass., who was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 and spend years in jail before being ruled innocent, holds his six-year-old Yorkshire terrier "Buddy" while speaking with a reporter from The Associated Press at his attorney's office, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Framingham, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Michael Sullivan, 64, of Lowell, Mass., who was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 and spend years in jail before being ruled innocent, brings feed to his pigeons at the home of his sister, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Billerica, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Michael Sullivan, 64, of Lowell, Mass., who was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 and spend years in jail before being ruled innocent, speaks to a reporter from The Associated Press at his attorney's office, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Framingham, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Pigeons belonging to Michael Sullivan, 64, of Lowell, Mass., stand together in a cage Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Billerica, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Michael Sullivan, 64, of Lowell, Mass., who was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 and spend years in jail before being ruled innocent, speaks to a reporter from The Associated Press at his attorney's office, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Framingham, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Michael Sullivan, 64, of Lowell, Mass., who was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 and spend years in jail before being ruled innocent, stands near his pigeons at the home of his sister, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, in Billerica, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The drubbing Democrats took in Pennsylvania in this year's election has prompted predictable vows to rebound, but it has also sowed doubts about whether Pennsylvania might be leaving the ranks of up-for-grabs swing states for a right-leaning existence more like Ohio's.

The introspection over voters' rejection of Democrats comes amid growing speculation about Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as a contender for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.

Widely expected to seek reelection in the 2026 mid-terms, Shapiro was considered a rising star in the party even before he garnered heavy national attention for making Vice President Kamala Harris' shortlist of candidates for running mates.

Some Pennsylvania Democrats say 2024’s losses are, at least in part, attributable to voters motivated specifically by President-elect Donald Trump. Many of those voters won't show up if Trump isn't on the ballot, the theory goes, leaving Pennsylvania's status as the ultimate swing state intact.

“I don’t think it’s an indicator for Pennsylvania,” said Jamie Perrapato, executive director of Turn PA Blue, which helps organize and train campaign volunteers. “I’ll believe it when these people come out and vote in any elections but for the presidency.”

Pennsylvania's status as the nation's premier battleground state in 2024 was unmistakable: political campaigns dropped more money on campaign ads than in any other state, according to data from ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

Plenty of that money was spent by Democrats, but their defeat was across the board. Democrats in Pennsylvania lost its 19 presidential electoral votes, a U.S. Senate seat, three other statewide races, two congressional seats and what was once a reassuring advantage in voter registration.

Some of those losses were particularly notable: Democrats hadn’t lost Pennsylvania's electoral votes and a Senate incumbent in the same year since 1880. The defeat of three-term Sen. Bob Casey is especially a gut-punch for Democrats: the son of a former governor has served in statewide office since 1997.

The same debate that Democrats are having nationally over Harris’ decisive loss is playing out in Pennsylvania, with no agreement on what caused them to be so wrong.

Some blamed President Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native, for backtracking on his promise not to run for reelection. Some blamed the party’s left wing and some blamed Harris, saying she tried to woo Republican voters instead of focusing on pocketbook issues that were motivating working-class voters.

In Pennsylvania, finger-pointing erupted in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia — where Trump significantly narrowed his 2020 deficit — between the city's Democratic Party chair and a Harris campaign adviser.

The nation’s sixth-most populous city is historically a driver of Democratic victories statewide, but Harris' margin there was the smallest of any Democratic presidential nominee since John Kerry's in 2004, and turnout there was well below the statewide average.

Rural Democrats suggested the party left votes on the table in their regions, too. Some said Harris hurt herself by not responding forcefully enough in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state against Trump's assertions that she would ban fracking.

Ed Rendell, the former two-term governor of Pennsylvania and ex-Democratic National Committee chair, said Trump had the right message this year and that Harris didn’t have enough time on the campaign trail to counter it.

Still, Rendell said Pennsylvania remains very much a swing state.

“I wouldn’t go crazy over these election results,” Rendell said. “It’s still tight enough to say that in 2022 the Democrats swept everything and you would have thought that things looked pretty good for us, and this time we almost lost everything.”

That year, Shapiro won the governor’s office by nearly 15%, John Fetterman was the only candidate in the nation to flip a U.S. Senate seat despite suffering a stroke in the midst of his campaign, and Democrats captured control of the state House of Representatives for the first time in a dozen years.

Bethany Hallam, an Allegheny County council member who is part of a wave of progressive Democrats to win office around Pittsburgh in recent years, said the party can fix things before Pennsylvania becomes Ohio. But she cautioned against interpreting 2024 as a one-time blip, saying it would be a mistake to think Trump voters will never be heard from again.

“They’re going to be more empowered to keep voting more,” Hallam said. “They came out, finally exercised their votes and the person they picked won. … I don’t think this was a one-off thing.”

Shapiro, assuming he seeks another term in 2026, would likely benefit from a mid-term backlash that has haunted the party in power — in this case, Republicans and Trump — in nearly every election since World War II.

The political landscape never stays the same, and voters two years from now will be reacting to a new set of factors: the state of the economy, the ups and downs of Trump's presidency, events no one sees coming.

Rendell predicted that Trump’s public approval ratings will be badly damaged — below 40% — even before he takes office.

Democrats, meanwhile, fully expect Republicans to come after Shapiro in an effort to damage any loftier ambitions he may have.

They say they’ll be ready.

“He’s on the MAGA radar,” said Michelle McFall, the Westmoreland County Democratic Party chair. “He’s a wildly popular governor in what is still the most important battleground state ... and we’re going to make sure we’re in fighting shape to hold that seat.”

In 2025, partisan control of the state Supreme Court will be up for grabs when three Democratic justices elected a decade ago must run to retain their seats in up-or-down elections without an opponent. Republicans have it marked on their calendars.

Democrats will go into those battles with their narrowest voter registration edge in at least a half-century. What was an advantage of 1.2 million voters in 2008, the year Barack Obama won the presidency, is now a gap of fewer than 300,000.

University of Pennsylvania researchers found that, since the 2020 presidential election, Republican gains weren’t because Republicans registered more new voters.

Rather, the GOP’s gains were from more Democrats switching their registration to Republican, a third party or independent, as well as more inactive Democratic voters being removed from registration rolls, the researchers reported.

Democrats have won more statewide elections in the past 25 years, but the parties are tied in that category in the five elections from 2020 through 2024.

Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said it is hard to predict that Pennsylvania is trending in a particular direction, since politics are evolving and parties that lose tend to adapt.

Even when Democrats had larger registration advantages, Hopkins said, Republicans competed on a statewide playing field.

Hopkins said Democrats should be worried that they lost young voters and Hispanic voters to Trump, although the swing toward the GOP was relatively muted in Pennsylvania. Trump’s 1.8 percentage-point victory was hardly a landslide, he noted, and it signals that Pennsylvania will be competitive moving forward.

“I don’t think that the registration numbers are destiny,” Hopkins said. “That’s partly because even with Democrats losing their registration advantage, whichever party can win the unaffiliated voters by a healthy margin will carry the state.”

Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter

FILE - Election workers process ballots during a recount in Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race at the Philadelphia Election Warehouse, Nov. 20, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

FILE - Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., left, stops to speak to members of the media before voting, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Scranton, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

FILE - Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa., as moderator South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem listens. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during a campaign rally for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Nov. 4, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)