The state’s highest court yesterday affirmed a Franklin Hill gang member’s conviction for the murder of 18-year-old Francis Stephens and the near-fatal shooting of his friend more than a decade ago, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

The Supreme Judicial Court’s decision upholds the 2005 convictions of ANDRE “DRE ROCK” WALKER (D.O.B. 8/5/80) for first-degree murder in Stephens’ Sept. 16, 2000, shooting death and armed assault with intent to murder in the shooting of a second youth, then 19. Walker is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional six to eight years.

The high court also made recommendations regarding the use of eyewitness identifications that Conley implemented as policy more than seven years ago. In a sweeping set of reforms, Conley’s office in 2004 adopted a series of protocols that make Boston and Suffolk County national leaders in preventing miscarriages of justice through flawed identifications – “the greatest source of wrongful convictions,” Justice Ralph Gants wrote in the unanimous 17-page decision.

“We in Suffolk County been called the ‘gold standard’ for eyewitness identification procedures,” Conley said. “It comes as no surprise that our longstanding policies are now being recommended statewide and across the country.”

Walker, a member of the Franklin Hill Giants street gang, and another man executed Stephens amid a blood feud with gang members associated with Esmond Street. The evidence showed that the two men fired 26 rounds at the scene, located near the intersection of Glenway and Harvard streets in Dorchester, shortly after 7:00 p.m. Walker fired multiple shots at Stephens as the victim lay on the ground wounded from previous rounds.

Neither Stephens nor his friend was associated with the Esmond Street crew. Walker later said that this “didn’t matter.”

Walker was convicted in large part through the testimony of a fellow Franklin Hill gang member, another man friendly with the gang, and a personal associate. On appeal, Walker argued among other things that his trial attorney was ineffective for failing to try to keep out of evidence an identification by a fourth witness who told Boston Police he’d seen the shooting. That witness later viewed a photo array and picked out Walker as one of the gunmen.

At trial, that witness recanted his identification, saying he was intoxicated when he made it, that police had pressured him into doing so, and that detectives had told him the array was composed of gang members’ photographs.

During a post-conviction motion for a new trial, Gants wrote, “the judge found that the defendant failed to prove that [the witness] was intoxicated during the identification procedure, that the police detectives pressured [him] to make selections from the photographic array, or that the detectives told [him] that the photographic array depicted members of a gang …. Because we conclude, based upon our independent review of the evidence, that the judge’s findings were not clearly erroneous, we accept these findings and agree that the defendant would not likely have been successful in proving that the identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive.”

The high court found that the identification procedure was not in keeping with its recommendations in a ruling that followed almost 10 years later, but noted that “Because the identification procedure with [the witness] took place before we provided this guidance … the detectives cannot be faulted for failing to follow it.”

“Moreover,” Gants wrote, “the heart of the Commonwealth’s case against Walker was the testimony of [Walker’s three associates], not [the fourth witness’] equivocal and retracted prior identification.”
In a 2009 decision, the SJC adopted US Department of Justice guidelines recommending that police presenting a photo array first inform a witness that it may or may not include a photo of the suspect, that it is as important to clear an innocent person as to identify a suspect, that people in photo arrays may not appear exactly as they did on the date of the incident, and that the investigation will continue regardless of whether an identification is made. In yesterday’s decision on the Walker case, the high court additionally recommended using one suspect photo and five or more filler photos in each array.
Conley’s office implemented each of these recommendations – along with 23 additional practices – in 2004 as part of an affirmative effort to address, correct, and prevent wrongful convictions. In fact, the Walker decision cites Gary Wells, a leading academic expert on eyewitness identification, years after Wells served on Conley’s blue ribbon Task Force on Eyewitness Evidence.

Assistant District Attorney Kathleen Celio of Conley’s Appeals Division successfully argued in support of Walker’s conviction. Walker was represented on appeal by attorney James Sultan.