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Chris Graham

Hampden County, Massachusetts Exonerations
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/PublishingImages/Hampden_County,_Massachusetts.png
On the night of July 1, 2017, 29-year-old Chris Graham left his car in the parking lot of Samuel’s Sports Bar in Springfield, Massachusetts, and went to Connecticut with a close friend. When he returned at about 2 a.m. on July 2, the bar was closing and there were numerous people in the parking lot.

When Graham, who is Black, was driving out of the lot, two white men, 26-year-old Adam Pafumi and 30-year-old Remington McNabb, were in front of him. He yelled at them to get out of the way. Both moved to the side of the lane, but as Graham drove past, Pafumi banged on the back of Graham’s vehicle.

Graham drove a short distance and then pulled over. As he was inspecting his car, he saw Pafumi and McNabb walking toward him. At the same time, a group of other men in the parking lot approached McNabb and Pafumi. Graham asked Pafumi why he had struck Graham’s car. Almost immediately after that, someone in the crowd punched Pafumi and knocked him to the ground unconscious.

McNabb then claimed that Graham had pointed a pistol at him, then walked away. Police were called, and when they arrived, the crowd, except for Graham, had dispersed. Graham was arrested. He would soon learn that Pafumi was an off-duty correctional officer with the Hampden County Sheriff’s office and that McNabb was an off-duty Springfield police officer.

Graham was charged with assaulting Pafumi as well as possession of a firearm without a license and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

In April 2018, Graham went to trial in Hampden County Superior Court. Pafumi testified that Graham approached him and McNabb, lifted a handgun from his waist, and pressed it against Pafumi's chest for 30 to 45 seconds. At that point, according to Pafumi, “someone came up behind me and – or a couple of people” and he lost consciousness and awoke hours later with a broken nose, a concussion, and other injuries. Pafumi also testified that a lot of people were outside the bar when it emptied out at closing time, but he was unaware of anyone walking with them to the parking lot and that “[e]veryone was pretty stationary.”

McNabb testified that when he and Pafumi were walking to the parking lot, a crowd of 20 to 30 other people began walking to the parking lot. McNabb said he saw Graham get out of his parked car while holding a silver handgun, and ask: “So what's up now?”

According to McNabb, Graham walked to Pafumi, put the gun to Pafumi's chest for “a couple of seconds.” He then lowered the gun, and started to walk back to his car. McNabb testified that he, Pafumi, and Graham were the only people present in that area at that time. McNabb said he then pulled out his gun, grabbed Graham, pushed him against a car, and ordered him to put up his hands.

McNabb said that Graham did not then have a gun in his hand, so he frisked him and found a gun in Graham’s left pocket. McNabb testified that he asked Graham if he had a license to carry a firearm, and Graham said he did not. McNabb said he then saw Pafumi lying on the ground and bleeding. He said he did not know what had happened to Pafumi.

McNabb said he saw a few other people standing around and yelled at them to back away, while pointing his gun at Graham. McNabb was not asked by the prosecutor or Graham’s defense attorney how it was that he, standing nearby, had not seen what had happened to Pafumi and, if he did not know, why he did not ask the other people standing around about Pafumi's loss of consciousness and injuries.

McNabb said he made telephone calls requesting help from the Springfield Police Department. Officers arrived and arrested Graham.

Officer Brendan O'Brien testified that he was in the first cruiser called to the scene. Although a crowd was present, he did not interview any witnesses or seek additional investigative information from anyone apart from McNabb.

The handgun which McNabb said he had taken from Graham had a single bullet in the chamber. It was presented as an exhibit at the trial. There was no evidence tying the gun to Graham. No fingerprints had been obtained from the weapon because the police had not used gloves when handling it. McNabb denied that he struck Graham in the face with his gun.

Joshua Bosworth testified for the defense that he first noticed McNabb and Graham when a fight broke out. He said that “a large group of Latino men and probably a few white people” were fighting. “White kid falls down, hits his head, starts bleeding,” Bosworth said.

He said he went to McNabb to try to get help. He said McNabb seemed “kind of aggressive, so I back up because I don’t want anything bad happening to me. And from there, I just watch as they search[ed] [Graham’s] car. They seem to find nothing.”

Bosworth said that at the same time as the fight, a police officer was holding a gun to Graham, who was up against a car and seemed to be cooperating. Bosworth said he saw McNabb pat down Graham, but never saw McNabb remove a firearm from him. Bosworth also said he never saw Graham holding a firearm.

Graham testified and denied having a weapon. He said that as he was driving between the bar and the parking lot, McNabb and Pafumi were drifting back and forth. He said he told them to get out of the road, and when he drove by, Pafumi hit the back of the car. Graham said he stopped to check for damage, and when McNabb and Pafumi approached, he asked Pafumi why he hit the car.

Graham said he backed up when Pafumi became aggressive. Graham said that at the same time he saw “a whole group of guys” coming up behind McNabb and Pafumi. One of them knocked Pafumi to the ground. Graham said McNabb “got into like a frantic state,” and “pulled his weapon out and start[ed] pointing it around to the crowd.”

The crowd scattered. Graham said McNabb then pointed the gun at him. Graham said he pulled out his cell phone and called 911. In response, McNabb hit him in the face with the gun and held him at gunpoint until officers arrived and arrested Graham.

Graham said that after he was placed in the back seat of a squad car, he saw McNabb pick up something from the ground.

On April 5, after a two-day trial, the jury acquitted Graham of assault and convicted him of possession of a weapon without a license and being a felon in possession of a handgun. He was sentenced to one year and six months in prison.

His appellate attorney, MarySita Miles, learned that Graham’s trial defense attorney had not requested any discovery from the prosecution and had not investigated Graham’s claim of innocence. The trial defense attorney had filed a complaint against McNabb with the Springfield Police Department for physical abuse, but the attorney had failed to obtain any records of what had happened.

Miles obtained a redacted report by the police Internal Investigations Unit (IIU) dated August 22, 2017. The report showed that a 911 call was made at 2:09 a.m. from someone at the parking lot. The caller said when Graham drove by McNabb and Pafumi, they accused him of speeding. Graham backed up his car and asked, “What’s up?” and then parked the car.

The caller said, “[T]he two white guys met him in the parking lot and an argument began…a Black guy punched one of the white guys and he fell to the ground unconscious.” According to the report, the caller said he did not know if it was Graham who punched Pafumi.

The caller said that “the other white guy pulled out a gun to defend his buddy and everyone scattered.” According to the IIU report, the caller said “the only one he saw with a gun was the white guy. He never saw anyone else with a gun.”

Miles interviewed the caller, who recalled that “two drunk white men were harassing a driver of a car and followed him to his car.” The caller said many other people were present, and only the white man had a firearm.

In May 2019, after obtaining a copy of the recording of the 911 call, Miles filed a motion seeking to vacate Graham’s convictions. On October 3, 2019, Graham was released from prison on parole.

On December 30, 2019, Hampden County Superior Court Justice Constance Sweeney vacated Graham’s convictions. The judge ruled that his trial defense attorney had failed to seek discovery, failed to investigate the case, and had largely failed to provide an adequate legal defense for Graham at the trial.

Justice Sweeney said that the trial defense lawyer had failed to present a booking photo which would have shown that Graham had a facial injury, supporting his claim that McNabb pistol-whipped him.

Justice Sweeney said the trial defense lawyer’s closing argument was “cursory and perfunctory. As in her cross-examination of the Commonwealth's witnesses, she neglected in the closing argument to mention significant weaknesses in the Commonwealth's case. Those included: (1) McNabb' s highly suspect claim that he was unaware of the crowd’s presence or that persons in the crowd had attacked Pafumi as McNabb stood nearby; (2) how Pafumi's account, that he fell unconscious just as the defendant was lowering his gun from Pafumi's chest, was at odds with others' accounts that Pafumi was attacked and fell unconscious while McNabb held the defendant at gunpoint; (3) that Bosworth watched McNabb pat frisk the defendant and did not see McNabb pull out a gun from the defendant's pocket; (4) that police investigators neglected to interview any of the many witnesses at the scene other than McNabb; and (5) how and why investigators did not handle the gun in such a way as to try to preserve fingerprint and DNA evidence.”

“The Commonwealth's case was thin, as it rested on the credibility of two witnesses with inconsistent and facially unrealistic accounts of the incident; accounts that were contradicted by the credible, unimpeached testimony of Bosworth,” Justice Sweeney noted.

On March 31, 2021, the prosecution dismissed the case.

In March 2024, Graham filed a lawsuit seeking compensation from the state of Massachusetts.

– Maurice Possley

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Posting Date: 1/7/2025
Last Updated: 1/7/2025
State:Massachusetts
County:Hampden
Most Serious Crime:Weapon Possession or Sale
Additional Convictions:Weapon Possession or Sale
Reported Crime Date:2017
Convicted:2018
Exonerated:2021
Sentence:1 year and 6 months
Race/Ethnicity:Black
Sex:Male
Age at the date of reported crime:29
Contributing Factors:Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct, Inadequate Legal Defense
Did DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration?:No