(Photo courtesy of the New England Innocence Project) From left to right: Erica Gagne, Sean K. Ellis, Radha Natarajan, and Miko Wilford (not pictured) discussed topics of mass incarceration, wrongful conviction, and criminal justice reform.
Natalia Gonzalez
Connector Editor
In 1995, 19-year-old Sean K. Ellis was convicted for robbery and the murder of Boston Police Detective John J. Mulligan at his third trial. Despite his first two trials ending in mistrials due to hung juries, Ellis was sentenced to life in prison where he spent nearly 22 years behind bars, proclaiming his innocence, until a 2015 ruling overturned his convictions due to evidence of police corruption and prosecutor misconduct. Ellis came to speak on his experiences at UMass Lowell on Feb. 16.
Unfortunately, Ellis, like many other young black men in the United States, fell victim to a criminal justice system that deems them guilty until proven otherwise. Despite evidence supporting Ellis’ innocence, it took over two decades for Ellis to be released from prison and cleared of his charges. “To the boys: I could be you. To the mothers; I could be your son. Younger people: I could be your brother. This is your invitation not to sit back,” Ellis said Wednesday night, in a panel hosted by UMass Lowell’s Psychology Department and School of Criminology and Justice Studies. “What I want you to understand – it can be you.”
Led by assistant teaching professor of criminology and justice studies, Erica Gagne, the panel focused on the wrongful incarceration of Sean K. Ellis, as well as the involvement of the New England Innocence Project in the turning of his conviction. Ellis, accompanied by Miko Wilford, associate professor of psychology, and Radha Natarajan, executive director of the New England Innocence Project, spoke of Ellis’ fourth trial, mass incarceration, eyewitness identification and more. “Telling these stories and getting these stories out is important because it stops them from happening,” said Gagne in an interview prior to the event. “The more we talk about it, the less it can happen.”
Gagne had been working on the panel for two years prior to its execution. Prior to this panel, she also hosted a panel with Yusef Salaam about his case and the case of Kalif Browder. “I believe that education and exposure are the best ways to stop discrimination, racial injustice, systemic racism, police brutality– all of these things. The more that I can educate and expose people, the better I feel that they will go out to the world,” said Gagne.
Having grown up in a Jewish community, Gagne explained the importance of story-telling and standing up for those less represented: “In some ways, I’ve almost taken my own cultural background and applied it to make sure that I tell these stories of Meek Mill, of Trayvon Martin, of Kalif Browder, of Sean Ellis, of anybody who’s been mistreated or wrongfully convicted. If I tell [these stories] again and again, they stop happening, hopefully, and more people are warned of what could happen.”
The New England Innocence Project, Natarajan said, works to prevent wrongful convictions through policy, advocacy, organization and collaboration, education and more. “We are committed to supporting people who have been exonerated and released from their wrongful convictions and for those who are freed but still fighting, which happens quite often…we support them,” she said during the panel. Having worked alongside Ellis to overturn his conviction, Natarajan notes the importance of having programs and organizations, such as The New England Innocence Project, to assist those who are fighting for justice and educate others on the flaws in the criminal justice system.
Such flaws in the criminal justice system include the use of eyewitness identification, which Wilford discusses on the panel. “[Memory] is very fragile, particularly when you’re thinking about memory in a legal context,” says Wilford. “Eyewitness identification can be trusted in certain cases… however, whether it can ever be fully reliable is a difficult question to answer.” Eyewitness identification, as Wilford explains, can be influenced by a variety of different factors, such as procedures, prior exposure and any biases. As seen by Ellis’ case, which relied heavily on eyewitness testimony, eyewitness identification can be circumstantial and dependent on a variety of different things.
When asked how people can help, as a community, to stop wrongful incarceration from happening, Ellis explained the importance of voting and jury duty. “You want to vote in local elections because those are the people that make the decisions that impact the quality of your life, first and foremost, on a local level,” said Ellis. “If you don’t go to jury duty, then your experience as a younger person, your experience as a black or brown person or your experience as a white person who has seen and witnessed things, is missing from that jury pool.” Ellis also urged people to stay connected, talk about the things that make people uncomfortable and work toward the relocation of resources where needed.
