In a complaint filed Tuesday in Massachusetts federal court against the city of Boston and three detectives, Milton Jones said he was framed by the Boston Police Department. He claims the department had a vendetta against him since he had previously escaped fake charges in instances that "eventually embarrassed" the force.
Jones was arrested as a teenager on false charges, the suit said, and let go "only because a large group of civilians gathered outside the police station and publicly demanded he be released."
He was arrested again for a robbery he didn't commit, refused to take a plea, and was acquitted by a jury. Because of these encounters, Jones said, the department held a grudge against him.
So when the Golden Café bar in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston was robbed in August 1975, and its owner, Albert Dunn, was murdered in the process, police began pointing the finger at Jones, his suit said.
"Mr. Jones's wrongful conviction was no accident — he was framed by detectives and officers from the Boston Police Department ('BPD'), who acted pursuant to the BPD's policies, patterns, practices, and customs in effect at the time," the suit said. "Indeed, the individual Defendants here were serial civil-rights violators and have caused numerous wrongful convictions."
Jones was waiting to see Kool & the Gang at a free summer concert at the time of the murder, according to his complaint. He said he hadn't even been to Dunn's bar.
Still, the suit said, he was singled out as detectives' No. 1 suspect despite "no physical or forensic evidence" linking him to the crime.
Witnesses who didn't get a clear look at the faces of the men who robbed the Golden Café were shown Jones' photo in a lineup.
"Through improper and unconstitutional pressure and suggestion," Jones said, Detectives Louis McConkey, Peter O'Malley and John J. Daley got one witness, Rita McLellan, to say Jones was the killer and ran with this to pin the crime on him. Jones said the detectives lied to McLellan's daughter by telling her she had picked the same person from the lineup as her mother, though she had not.
As a result, the detectives eventually got both women to identify Jones on the stand because McLellan got up and pointed the finger at Jones, the suit said, and her daughter simply followed.
The suit said officers "coerced" a third witness, Alma Condo, into suggesting Jones was the perpetrator "by using leverage they had over her." Jones' complaint added that Condo's daughter was involved in illegal drug activity and that detectives said they "were willing to look the other way."
Decades later, when Jones was on parole, always having professed his innocence, he decided to try to clear his name. He asked for and obtained a new trial. This time prosecutors were on his side, with the state "conceding that 'justice was not done,'" his suit said.
His convictions were vacated in 2022, and the state declined to prosecute him, dismissing all charges.
Jones' suit calls his wrongful conviction just one in a long line of similar cases "caused by the City's unconstitutional practices and deliberate indifference."
It wasn't until the 1990s that Boston police adopted rules against hiding information from prosecutors, the suit said, and not until 1995 that they officially took up a rule against falsifying evidence.
The police commissioner who was active when Jones was arrested said at the time that the department "had no policy requiring the disclosure of exculpatory or impeachment evidence, and that it was the standard practice to withhold exculpatory and impeachment evidence," according to the suit.
Even if officers deliberately hid exculpatory evidence, they faced no repercussions, the suit claimed. "If officers felt that they had their man, they were not going to do anything to help the defendant or his attorney," the suit quoted the former commissioner as having said.
The 10-count complaint blamed the detectives for depriving Jones of his freedom without due process and denying him a fair trial via fabricated evidence. Jones said the detectives "deliberately" hid evidence that could help show he was innocent, including details of their "reckless Investigation."
Jones alleged he was maliciously prosecuted in violation of the 14th Amendment and said the detectives were negligent and caused him emotional distress.
The city of Boston was also to blame, Jones said, adding that it played a role in supervising these detectives.
Boston's leaders were "the moving force behind the very type of misconduct at issue," the suit said, adding the misconduct was so widespread that it was "the de facto policy of the City of Boston."
Jones was put behind bars when his daughter was 5 years old and released when she was 20.
"All those years were lost. I don't know what being a dad truly looks like. I don't know how I would have raised my daughter, since the opportunity to try was lost," he was quoted as saying in his suit.
He was "forced to navigate life unfairly branded as a murderer," the suit said, calling the harm caused to Jones "nearly unimaginable."
Still, Jones, who is 73, has been able to make the most of his life, according to his attorney Mary Katherine McCarthy. Now living in a Boston suburb, he works with victims of violent crime and with released offenders as the director of reentry services at the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, she said.
He is "helping people learn and heal," McCarthy said.
McCarthy said she expected "more misconduct to be uncovered" as the case moves forward.
Jones is seeking compensatory damages as well as pre- and postjudgment interest and attorney fees.
Representatives for the defendants could not be reached for comment, and the Boston mayor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jones is represented by Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann, Nick Brustin, Mary Katherine McCarthy and Katherine Cion of Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger LLP and John J. Barter and Amy M. Belger.
Counsel information for defendants was not immediately available.
The case is Jones v. City of Boston et al., case number 1:25-cv-13084, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
--Editing by Nick Siwek.
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