Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody. It is Sunday, December seventh, and one
Speaker 1: of the largest monetary awards ever given for a wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction case happened in the United States just in the
Speaker 1: past few weeks and it was awarded unfortunately posthumously. Is
Speaker 1: justice still served if it served after death, that's a question.
Speaker 1: But eighty million dollars was awarded to the estate of
Speaker 1: Daryl Boyd. That's not necessarily a household name, Babe Daryld Boyd,
Speaker 1: but he was one of the Buffalo Five.
Speaker 2: And even that, I think a lot of people might
Speaker 2: not know that name, that story, that history of what
Speaker 2: happened with his story. But we mentioned this Darl Boyd,
Speaker 2: and yes, welcome everybody to this episode of Amy and TJ.
Speaker 2: This has been a story. I don't know what This
Speaker 2: is a question of justice. What does justice look like?
Speaker 2: A life was taken from this man who ended up
Speaker 2: on hard times and he should not be dead right now,
Speaker 2: by all accounts, by bost accounts these days, was still
Speaker 2: a young man. This is a weird, weird Yes, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go with that weird story where we have a
Speaker 2: conflict of what justice looks like. How do you make amends?
Speaker 2: This is a guy who finally got what he's been
Speaker 2: fighting for but never saw it ultimately come to pass.
Speaker 1: He fought for it for every last moment of his life.
Speaker 1: And perhaps maybe the silver lining was it was a
Speaker 1: sweet moment to know that his family members were there
Speaker 1: in the trial for every single day as his proxy.
Speaker 1: His mother and his son attended this trial. We were
Speaker 1: talking about Darryl Boyd, one of the Buffalo Five, And
Speaker 1: if you don't know who the Buffalo Five was, I
Speaker 1: was not familiar with this case.
Speaker 2: I had to look it up.
Speaker 1: But these were at the time, five black young men
Speaker 1: boys who were wrongfully accused back in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: of robbing and killing a sixty two year old white
Speaker 1: man named William Crawford inside his home. So Daryl Boyd
Speaker 1: was among this group of young men who were wrongfully accused.
Speaker 1: And if you look and see what happened to Daryl
Speaker 1: Boyd back in nineteen seventy six, he had a two
Speaker 1: and a half week trial and the jury took just
Speaker 1: one hour to convict him, and he spent decades in prison.
Speaker 1: He was eventually released in nineteen ninety nine, but his
Speaker 1: conviction wasn't vacated until twenty twenty one. And the really, really,
Speaker 1: really sad part of this story is he didn't live
Speaker 1: to see justice. He didn't live to see that verdict
Speaker 1: where he was not only exonerated but compensated by eighty
Speaker 1: million dollars that is one of the largest decisions ever
Speaker 1: or basically financial.
Speaker 2: They don't, they argue, his attorneys say, this is the
Speaker 2: Some will tell you this is the largest ever award
Speaker 2: given to someone who is wrong with.
Speaker 1: Wrong, correct, correct, And so this is a huge historic
Speaker 1: case and it's only well, there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: why this is a sad story with maybe somewhat of
Speaker 1: a happy ending, but it's just so sad that he
Speaker 1: died of pancreatic cancer. He died in February of this
Speaker 1: past year, February twenty six, twenty twenty five, while he
Speaker 1: was fighting to clear his name and to get some
Speaker 1: sort of justice. And and I love though, I love
Speaker 1: it his mother and that his son were there every
Speaker 1: single day of that trial.
Speaker 2: How old was he? These were young guys.
Speaker 1: They were teenagers when this was happening, was teenagers when
Speaker 1: they were wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 2: Fifty years ago. So these were still guys in their
Speaker 2: early sixties for the most part, right early mid sixties,
Speaker 2: and out of the Buffalo five is there, there's one
Speaker 2: or two left, so I have that right. And this
Speaker 2: is kind of a complicated story to a certain degree,
Speaker 2: but these guys really did because of what happened, they
Speaker 2: fell on some really hard times even though they finally
Speaker 2: got these convictions and don't have it right. Robes. The
Speaker 2: state essentially wants to continue to point out convictions were vacated.
Speaker 2: They were never exonerated in court. No one in court
Speaker 2: ever said you're not guilty. No one ever threw out
Speaker 2: in that way in saying you didn't do that. They
Speaker 2: still tried to hold onto way and they were still
Speaker 2: fighting for I guess actual exoneration. Don't have that right, don't.
Speaker 1: We see this all the time though, because the state,
Speaker 1: the prosecutors. There's a lot of reasons why people don't
Speaker 1: want to admit to any sort of prosecutorial misconduct. Namely
Speaker 1: it's probably.
Speaker 2: Ego but just that we got it wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one wants to admit that from a political
Speaker 1: or just egotistical standpoint, but also from a financial one
Speaker 1: as well, because once you admit that someone did something
Speaker 1: wrong to another Yeah, there is a financial repercussion. But
Speaker 1: I love for me the fact that this was a
Speaker 1: two and a half week trial and it took the
Speaker 1: jury one hour, one hour to give the estate of
Speaker 1: Darryl Boyd eighty million dollars. That sends a huge message.
Speaker 1: And just to know that it took them, babe, one
Speaker 1: hour to give that award, that is telling.
Speaker 2: I mean that it sends a message. Yes, are they
Speaker 2: ever going to see that money?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I don't think it was the point necessarily of being
Speaker 2: in court. But how do you right this kind of wrong?
Speaker 2: How can you ever? Ever? We should never make a
Speaker 2: mistake like this. He took these guys' lives, who couldn't
Speaker 2: find jobs, who fell on hard times, who had kinds
Speaker 2: of alcohol drug abuse problems in their lives. They couldn't
Speaker 2: get lives back that were taken from them as teenagers.
Speaker 2: This cannot, it should never happen. It sounds crazy that
Speaker 2: you would. I would rather see a guilty man go
Speaker 2: free than an innocent man be put in jail. We
Speaker 2: shouldn't have to make that kind of decision. But damn,
Speaker 2: you cannot do this to people. And he's dead now
Speaker 2: because of what the state did. To him. I will
Speaker 2: absolutely state, who knows what his life would have looked like,
Speaker 2: it could have been thin.
Speaker 1: About So he dies of pancreatic cancer, and look, anyone
Speaker 1: who has had cancer, you start to wonder why, why me?
Speaker 1: How did this happen to me? Especially when you don't
Speaker 1: have family history, and any doctor will tell you stress, stress,
Speaker 1: emotional stress. The toll that takes on your body is palpable.
Speaker 1: It is document like, you can document it. It is
Speaker 1: like there. I think that that would be a very
Speaker 1: fair connection to make between the unbelievable stress this man
Speaker 1: and this teenager faced. Yes, it cut his life short.
Speaker 1: I think that is a very fair deduction to make
Speaker 1: based on what you see this man, what he went
Speaker 1: through to be wrongfully convicted as a teenager, as a
Speaker 1: black teenager in nineteen seventy six, being accused of robbing
Speaker 1: and killing a white.
Speaker 2: Man in Buffalo. And again, Buffalo has a history of
Speaker 2: racial strife. Let's it's certainly throw that out there. This
Speaker 2: is Buffalo in nineteen seventy six, So maybe you like, okay,
Speaker 2: some people in this area will go, yes, that that
Speaker 2: actually reads for Buffalo at that time, but this was specific.
Speaker 2: What is this misdeeds, misdeeds of prosecutors and withholding evidence
Speaker 2: is why these young fellas ended up having decades of
Speaker 2: their lives taken away from them. That just cannot happen. So, yes,
Speaker 2: you applaud, You're happy to see, but is this eighty
Speaker 2: million ever gonna get seen?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: They sued what this was the county?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Was it not this time? They already some of them
Speaker 2: already got with four point seven million from the City
Speaker 2: of Buffalo. So some money has been paid. Can you
Speaker 2: ever make up for it?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Not really? What does this mean? What do we do?
Speaker 2: If nothing else? I hope this gets us to pay
Speaker 2: attention more and more to our criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: Yes, and we've been talking about, we have been covering
Speaker 1: and we will continue to do so. Our execution schedule
Speaker 1: in this country. And look, you can feel how you
Speaker 1: feel about the death penalty, but this is one of
Speaker 1: those cases where okay, these young men were not given
Speaker 1: the death penalty, actually shockingly, but it's New York so
Speaker 1: that's why. But imagine if this were a death penalty case,
Speaker 1: you cannot undo an execution, and you do see the disparity,
Speaker 1: the unfair group of people who are put on death row.
Speaker 1: It is undeniable. And so you see a case like
Speaker 1: this where there is actual proof that prosecutors and investigators
Speaker 1: acted illegally, like that is the best way to describe it.
Speaker 1: So we saw and I just think about the fight
Speaker 1: that this man had, Darryl Boyd had for his entire life,
Speaker 1: but he ultimate only file a lawsuit in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: And here is what the allegations were that the jury
Speaker 1: bought and the jury sent a very telling verdict about
Speaker 1: prosecutors did not disclose more than a dozen pieces of
Speaker 1: evidence in this case that pointed to other suspects a
Speaker 1: dozen pieces of evidence. They also can improve that investigators
Speaker 1: coerced witnesses to give false statements. We see this all
Speaker 1: the time. Jail house informants, eyewitnesses, the worst kind of
Speaker 1: evidence you could possibly notoriously historically has been proven are
Speaker 1: just not reliable. And yet time and time again, how
Speaker 1: often do we see people's lives hanging in the balance.
Speaker 1: Their lives are determined by this type of testimony that
Speaker 1: has been proven to be not reliable.
Speaker 2: Including from one of the Buffalo Five. Only four of
Speaker 2: the five ended up in prison because one of the
Speaker 2: five testified against the other four that one robes. I
Speaker 2: don't know how soon after these convictions, but certainly now
Speaker 2: has been screaming from the mountaintops that know, his testimony
Speaker 2: against the other four was coursed. He did not mean it,
Speaker 2: and he has taken he has recanted essentially everything he
Speaker 2: said about the other four.
Speaker 1: My goodness, And as we alluded to Erie County, that's buffalo.
Speaker 1: They have already said they're going to appeal this judgment.
Speaker 1: So of course, yes, the eighty million dollars hanging in
Speaker 1: the balance.
Speaker 2: They can't paign it like they literally do not have
Speaker 2: the money. You can say what you want, they don't
Speaker 2: have it. They got to figure something else out. But
Speaker 2: they don't have eighty million floating around.
Speaker 1: No, and I would say most jurisdictions do not. But
Speaker 1: the idea idea is that this sends a message to
Speaker 1: any community, any county who wants to go ahead and
Speaker 1: make false claims and build a case on false allegations
Speaker 1: against someone. And that is important. But we're going to
Speaker 1: get into what the reaction was from the Boyd family
Speaker 1: on this verdict, on Erie County's reaction to this verdict,
Speaker 1: and where it goes from here.
Speaker 2: Welcome back, everyone.
Speaker 1: We are talking about one of, if not the largest
Speaker 1: award ever given in terms of money for a wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction case in this country, Darryl Boyd, And sadly we
Speaker 1: have to say the estate of Daryl Boyd was awarded
Speaker 1: eighty million dollars by a jury of his peers. They
Speaker 1: took an hour to come up with his verdict after
Speaker 1: hearing all of the evidence of what Darryl Boyd had
Speaker 1: to endure from the time he was a teenager wrongfully
Speaker 1: accused of murdering a white man back in Gosh in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six. He along with three others because they're
Speaker 1: called the Buffalo Five, but one of the Buffalo five
Speaker 1: was co Worce we now know, into testifying against four
Speaker 1: other defendants who all paid the price for a crime
Speaker 1: they did not actually commit. And so it is one
Speaker 1: of these atrocities. And we hear about so many of
Speaker 1: unfortunately these young men being sent to death row. But
Speaker 1: in a sense, yes, this young man, Darryl Boyd, spent
Speaker 1: decades in prison and even longer trying to maintain his
Speaker 1: innocence until posthumously, after he already died from pancreatic cancer.
Speaker 1: His mother and his son were there when the verdict
Speaker 1: was read by that jury, saying, you are owed eighty
Speaker 1: million dollars for what you have suffered because of our
Speaker 1: supposed justice system. And I wanted to read what Darryl
Speaker 1: Boyd's reps said about this verdict because it was just,
Speaker 1: it was heartrending. He lost his whole adult life to
Speaker 1: this wrongful conviction. The jury heard how many years he
Speaker 1: was suffering in maximum security prison. All the terrible things
Speaker 1: you assume happened in prison happened in prison. And they
Speaker 1: said he would not have spent forty five years asserting
Speaker 1: his innocence and fighting for his liberty in connection with
Speaker 1: the crime that he did not commit and had not
Speaker 1: been for the misdeeds of prosecutors, police, all the people
Speaker 1: who were involved in prosecuting him.
Speaker 2: The tragedy of his life is directly attributable to the misdeeds,
Speaker 2: as they say, of the state, and that just it
Speaker 2: can never ever happen. Your heart goes out to these
Speaker 2: folks that eighty million. Who knows how it's going to
Speaker 2: be settled, how it's going to be resolved. I think
Speaker 2: that the county isn't necessarily arguing or that misdeeds were done.
Speaker 2: It was just a matter of we can't pay this,
Speaker 2: so we have to appeal this. How do you resolve this?
Speaker 2: I don't know, But these stories, there is nothing more
Speaker 2: tragic in our justice system than when someone, an innocent
Speaker 2: person goes to prison. A guilty person going free is awful,
Speaker 2: but we cannot ever have this happen.
Speaker 1: And these are the kinds of judgments that make headlines.
Speaker 1: And that's important because we learn about this is something.
Speaker 1: This is a story I did not know about. Did
Speaker 1: you know about the Buffalo five?
Speaker 2: Yes? I did not.
Speaker 1: I will fully admit it's.
Speaker 2: Come up again. We had the Buffalo shooting at the
Speaker 2: recently with the at the grocery store. Buffalo has a history,
Speaker 2: Reflo just has a history, and these things come up.
Speaker 1: Yes, So for people who aren't and who weren't aware
Speaker 1: or who weren't around when this was all making headlines,
Speaker 1: this kind of a jury decision matters. Maybe not for
Speaker 1: the fact that his family members are actually going to
Speaker 1: get the eighty million dollars, but it makes enough headlines
Speaker 1: where we're recognizing the injustice that occurred, the imbalance, and
Speaker 1: the comp how our justice system works, it's weighted heavily
Speaker 1: towards those who have money for proper representation, who have
Speaker 1: the ability to defend themselves, and those who do not.
Speaker 1: And that is not a fair justice system, period. So
Speaker 1: I do think it's interesting to at least read what
Speaker 1: Erie County Buffle low As in Erie County said in
Speaker 1: reaction to this judgment. And this is telling because you
Speaker 1: pointed out TJ they don't have the money. But here
Speaker 1: is what they said. The county executive said this after
Speaker 1: the jury's decision. I feel bad for mister Boyd who
Speaker 1: since passed, but we, the people of Erie County, have
Speaker 1: to pay for it. We don't have eighty million just
Speaker 1: sitting around to pay out. Sometimes I think these juries think, oh,
Speaker 1: the governments, they have all this money, but each and
Speaker 1: every one of us pays for it in the long run.
Speaker 1: We just think the amount of the judgment was excessive.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we agree, but we can't pay. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: we agree wrong was done. This is awful, But those
Speaker 2: folks now in those roles, weren't there in those roles
Speaker 2: fifty years ago, and now they're trying to do right
Speaker 2: by their citizens and trying in some way maybe do
Speaker 2: right by this man who's done wrong by that government
Speaker 2: that they now represent. I get it. I don't know
Speaker 2: the right thing now is to do with a man
Speaker 2: is dead. His life was taken, not by pancreatic cancer,
Speaker 2: I would argue, so this is just another tragedy all
Speaker 2: around that we're trying to find something to learn from,
Speaker 2: something to learn from.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the whole point of talking about
Speaker 1: these cases and the importance of these cases, even when
Speaker 1: they're long overdue and perhaps never actually received. There is
Speaker 1: something to that jury's verdict in the honor of Daryl
Speaker 1: Boyd's name, who he was, and more importantly, who he
Speaker 1: was not. So thank you everyone for listening to us.
Speaker 1: We certainly appreciate it. I'm Mami Robock alongside TJ. Holmes.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to us as always, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Disna