 Joseph Bennett (Photo: WGBH)
Five days later, at the Rolls Club, a nightclub in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston, 25-year-old Jasper Gillard was fatally shot during a fight at the club.
On January 16, police arrested 22-year-old Joseph Bennett after witnesses identified him as the gunman in both shootings.
On February 17, 1997, a Suffolk County grand jury indicted Bennett on charges of first-degree murder, armed assault with intent to murder, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, assault by means of a dangerous weapon and several counts of unlawful possession of a firearm.
After a defense motion to sever the charges into separate trials was denied, Bennett went to trial in Suffolk County Superior Court in April 1998.
Two witnesses, Veronica Davis and Damian Hunt, who had testified at the grand jury that Bennett was the gunman in the Grove Hall shooting, recanted their testimony. Davis claimed that she did not recall seeing Bennett in the street nor did she recall her testimony at the grand jury. Hunt recanted as well, though he admitted he had told the grand jury that Bennett was the gunman. Their grand jury testimony was introduced as evidence.
Terrell Dilworth was the only witness to identify Bennett as the gunman who shot Gillard at the nightclub. He had testified before the grand jury that Bennett was the gunman. At trial, he identified Bennett in the courtroom. He admitted that he initially told police that he did not know who the shooter was, but someone had told him to identify Bennett.
The prosecution also tied the two crimes to Bennett with testimony from Catherine Doherty, a Boston police firearms analyst. Although the gun used in the shooting was never recovered, Doherty said the bullets recovered at the Rolls Club and the victim's body were fired from the same gun that fired the bullets recovered from the Grove Hall shooting. She testified that “an individual identification would be to the exclusion of all other firearms manufactured.” Doherty also testified about individual characteristics of a bullet, saying they “also allow us to exclude all others of the same type. So that would be basically like a fingerprint, that there are no others like that in the world.” She referred to them as being unique like a “snowflake.”
Christopher Smith testified for the defense that Bennett was not the gunman. Michelle Jones testified that Bennett was standing beside her outside the club at the time of the shooting. Two other witnesses, Stacy Garvin and Diane Grant, testified that Bennett had been ejected by the bouncer and did not re-enter the nightclub.
On April 23, 1998, the jury convicted Bennett of second-degree murder and the remaining charges. He was sentenced to life in prison.
In November 2001, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts upheld the convictions.
On March 10, 2003, Bennett filed his first motion for a new trial. The motion argued that an eyewitness, Sean Veale, said he was speaking with Bennett outside the nightclub at the same time the shots were fired inside. The motion also cited a Boston Globe newspaper article about the frequency of criminals sharing weapons throughout Boston.
By that time, the trial judge had retired. The case was assigned to Superior Court Judge Charles Spurlock who denied the motion without a hearing. The judge ruled that Bennett was aware of Veale prior to the trial, so his testimony was not newly discovered evidence. Judge Spurlock said the other issues should have been raised in Bennett’s initial appeal after the verdict. The dismissal was upheld by the Appeals Court in 2004.
On January 19, 2007, Bennett filed his second motion for a new trial after Dilworth recanted his trial testimony that Bennett was the shooter. He later said, “I tried many times to tell [the police] that Mr. Bennett…wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, before and after the trial. I also said these things because they took care of some cases for me and they helped me knock off the rest of my probation.”
Additionally, the motion cited six new witnesses who confirmed that Bennett was not the gunman. The gunman was identified as a man known as “Tweet,” who had died in 2000.
Judge Spurlock conducted an evidentiary hearing. In addition to the witnesses, Bennett submitted an affidavit in which he admitted he was at the club on January 9, 1997, and had been thrown out after a scuffle. He said that because he was drunk, he had “very little specific recollection” of who he might have seen that night.
A bouncer at the club, David A. Smith, also submitted an affidavit stating that it was the club's firm policy not to readmit any person who had been ejected from the club. Bennett also refiled the Veale affidavit that he had submitted with his first motion for a new trial, which the judge at that time ruled did not constitute newly discovered evidence.
Nykia Chapman and Najia Chapman, twin sisters whose aunt, Diane Grant, had testified for Bennett at his 1998 trial, testified that they saw Bennett get ejected from the club, and did not see him reenter. Nykia said that she saw Tweet waving a gun, and seconds later she heard two or more gunshots. Nykia testified that she was later contacted by the police and was interviewed by them. She told them she did not witness anything. She testified that she denied knowledge because she was underage at the time of the shooting and was afraid of adverse consequences if she admitted to being at the club.
Najia testified that she saw Tweet firing a handgun. Najia also testified that she was contacted by the police at the time, but deliberately failed to give them any information because she was underage and was fearful of the consequences if she cooperated with the police.
Kilra Hylton testified that at the time of the shooting she saw Bennett outside the club. She had also seen Tweet inside the club. She said she had not come forward because she was unaware that Bennett had been prosecuted.
Stephen Jordan testified that he saw Bennett being escorted out of the club, and that Bennett was still outside when the shots were fired. Jordan also said he had been unaware that Bennett had been convicted in the shooting.
Marchaina Williams said she saw the shooting in the club, and that the gunman was shorter than Bennett.
Dilworth recanted his testimony once more and stated that he had been pressured by the police to identify the defendant as the shooter.
Lieutenant Detective Merner testified for the prosecution that he had never coached or otherwise intimidated Dilworth and that Dilworth had spontaneously identified the shooter as “Toot from Mission [Hill].” Bennett’s nickname was “Toot.” Merner also claimed that he had never offered anything to Dilworth in exchange for his cooperation.
On September 25, 2008, Judge Spurlock denied the motion for a new trial. He found that Nykia and Najia Chapman were on the defense witness list for the trial, and therefore ruled their information could not be newly discovered evidence. Similarly, the judge found that Williams's information was not newly discovered because it was known to the defendant in 1999, before the defendant filed his first motion for a new trial. The judge further found that the information of Hylton and Jordan would have been cumulative of the defense evidence at trial, as were the contents of the Smith affidavit in light of the trial testimony of Stacy Garvin and Diane Grant. Finally, the judge did not believe Dilworth's recantation of his trial testimony to be credible.
The Appeals Court upheld the denial on November 2, 2010.
In 2016, Bennett’s attorney, Jennifer O’Brien filed a third motion for a new trial. The motion contained four affidavits from individuals who had not been interviewed by police or the defense.
One affidavit was from Anthony Jackson, who had been on the defense trial witness list, but could not be found at the time. Jackson said he was at the Rolls Club on the night of the shooting with his friend, Mishawn Washington, who had since died. Because Jackson was on crutches at the time for injuries sustained during an unrelated shooting, his mobility was limited. He said he was on a bar stool for most of the evening and had a clear view of the dance floor/bathroom area where the shooting took place. Jackson said there was a fight and that Bennett was ejected from the club by the bouncer. Jackson said he did not see Bennett again. Jackson said Bennett was not present when another fight broke out and shots were fired. He said that during the second fight, Terrance Blair, who was known as “Tweet,” pointed a black small-caliber firearm at Gillard.
Another witness, Steven Greene, verified Jackson’s account. Greene said was “certain” that Blair was the gunman. Greene said he saw a firearm in Blair’s hand at the same time he heard gunfire.
Kenneth James provided an affidavit that he saw a man with a gun in his hand who was not Bennett.
The fourth affidavit was from Nakhomnenn Horton, who was present in the Rolls Club on the night of the shooting. Horton said he saw Bennett ejected from the club after the first fight and witnessed the shooting. He saw another individual holding a gun in the air. Horton said that while he did not know that person, he was 100 percent positive it was not Bennett.
O’Brien contended that the affidavits were “concise, assertive, and direct ... .there are four witnesses who were never interviewed by police, three of whom were not known to the defendant, nor could they reasonably have been discovered by the defense at the time of trial. They are now coming forward asserting that they personally saw the firearm in the hand of another individual.”
Judge Peter Krupp denied Bennett’s motion for a new trial. O’Brien then filed a motion to reconsider the denial, arguing that there were now more witnesses who were prepared to come forward and testify that Bennett was not the shooter at the Rolls Club.
Kenneth Clark, who was on the witness list for the defense at the time of trial, but who was not called to testify, provided an affidavit saying that he had gotten into a fight in the club with Bennett. As a result, both were ejected out the back door of the club. According to Clark, he and Bennett were in the alley when they heard gunshots inside and fled.
This motion for reconsideration also challenged the firearms analyst’s testimony. William Tobin, a firearms expert, provided an affidavit saying the analyst’s testimony was scientifically invalid.
Tobin said, “[T] here is no scientific foundation for these assertions. Claims that certain bullets or cartridge cases “matched” or were identified as having been fired in a specific firearm, such as those made by Doherty and by the State in both opening and closing arguments based on forensic pattern-matching methodology, are not scientifically supportable. Additionally, expressions of certainty – like Doherty’s assertion of “absolutely certain” – are considered unfounded by the scientific community,” Tobin said.
On April 16, 2019, following an evidentiary hearing during which eight witnesses testified on the Bennett’s behalf, including Clark, Jackson, Green, and Demetrius Dunston (who was housed in state prison with Bennett and approached him informing him that he had been at the Rolls that night, saw another person shoot Gillard, but didn’t come forward because of his experience with police and the ‘no snitch’ rule), Judge Peter Krupp vacated Bennett’s conviction and ordered a new trial.
“Through his various motions for new trial, [Bennett] has now brought forward at least 14 witnesses who have provided sworn statements, and are prepared to testify, that they were at the Rolls Club, saw defendant and/or the shooter, and either defendant was not the shooter, he was not in a place to be the shooter, or the shooter was of a physical size different from [Bennett],” the judge declared.
“Given all of the new evidence indicating that a different person shot Jasper Gillard, I find
that justice may not have been done in this case as it relates to the murder charge, and I grant
defendant's motion for a new trial on that charge,” Judge Krupp ruled.
On April 30, 2019, Bennett was released on bond pending a retrial. He had finished serving his sentences imposed for the Grove Hill shooting in 2002.
The prosecution appealed. On April 12, 2021, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts affirmed the ruling. The Commonwealth, however, insisted that it would retry Bennett, and placed his case on the trial list. It remained there for more than three years.
After Bennett was released, he founded YardTime, an organization that provides support for people released from prison. It also seeks to improve the quality of life for inner-city African American youth and men of color in Boston. His uncle, Willie Bennett, had been falsely accused of the murder of Carol Stuart in 1989. Stuart’s husband fatally shot her and then blamed a Black man. Willie Bennett and Alan Sampson were arrested, but never convicted. The case unraveled after Stuart leaped to his death from a bridge into the Mystic River.
On December 4, 2024, the prosecution finally dismissed the case. The motion to dismiss said that since Dilworth had recanted, it would not pursue a second trial. The Commonwealth said, “After reviewing the current state of the evidence…and the passage of nearly twenty-seven years, the Commonwealth has concluded it cannot prove the murder charge again beyond a reasonable doubt.”
– Maurice Possley
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