Archive for March, 2023

Suffolk judge overturns 1992 murder conviction, clearing Barry Kamara’s name at last

Friday, March 31st, 2023

photo: Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

“Since 2019, judges have thrown out murder and rape convictions against more than a dozen Boston men, almost all of whom are Black and had been sentenced to life in prison.

Barry Kamara has fought for nearly 32 years to prove that he wasn’t the gunman who killed a fellow teenager on Dakota Street in Dorchester.

Those efforts paid off Tuesday, when Suffolk Superior Court Judge James Lang said he plans to throw out Kamara’s 1992 murder conviction. The case that first sent Kamara behind bars at age 17 had fallen apart because prosecutors and police withheld evidence that pointed to potential other killers.

Read the article by Andrew Ryan in the Boston Globe.

Does mandatory reporting of child abuse help or hurt? A Colorado task force is taking a second look.

Saturday, March 18th, 2023

photo: Mark Reis, special to the Colorado Sun

“The way our mandatory reporting system exists right now — my opinion is that it does more harm than it does good,” Jerry Milner told the state’s Mandatory Reporting Task Force last month.

Milner is former head of the Children’s Bureau, a federal agency tasked with child abuse prevention. He said listening to families, including children, who have been negatively impacted by intrusive and damaging investigations by child protective services changed his mind about a policy he once endorsed.

Read this article by Kristin Jones in the Colorado Sun.