Interim Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden announced today that his office will be looking into the conviction of Charles Bogues in the 1993 murder of Louis D. Brown.
Bogues spent 16 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder, but said recently that he did not kill Brown. He told Greater Boston host Jim Braude that law enforcement lied about the facts in the case, including omitting ballistic evidence and eyewitness description of the person who fired that fatal shot. Both Bogues and Brown's mother, Clementina Chéry, said they want the DA to revisit the case.
“We do have intention to look at it, and we are looking at it,” Hayden said on Boston Public Radio Friday. “We are looking at that case actively, and so I don't think I could say much more than that right now.”
Following his recently announced bid for a full term, Hayden also discussed his agenda as interim DA and the motivations behind his work.
The prosecutor said he generally supports former Suffolk County DA and current U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins’ non-prosecution list of 15 low-level offenses, but that he plans to look at cases more on an individual basis rather than what he called “a formulaic approach.”
“When your case is declined, when you don't go to the system, when we make sure that you don't get tagged on the system, do you get the services you need?” Hayden asked. “If you've got a problem with drugs, are you going to get treatment for that? If you have mental health issues, are you going to get treatment for that? Because if we just declined to prosecute your case, and send you on your way, that's not necessarily going to get us anywhere. You could be right back there.”
Boston's gang database has come under fire for racial bias. Hayden said he wants to see it reformed and “narrowly tailored,” but not abolished altogether.
“Until there's no gangs, I'm not prepared to say that there shouldn’t be a gang database,” he said. Hayden also agreed with Rollins’ recent comments about the inclusion of neo-Nazis in the database.
The interim DA emphasized racial disparities in the criminal justice system, pointing to his personal experiences as a Black man in the U.S. He said when he was in his early twenties, police frisked and searched him.
“What happened to me, and what has happened to young Black men over the years, is why I started doing what I'm doing,” Hayden said.
Hayden grew up in Boston, and worked as an assistant district attorney in the Suffolk County DA’s office in the late 1990s and early 2000s before moving to work in criminal defense. In 2015, he moved to chair the Sex Offender Registry Board. He said his experience in both prosecution and defense helped him form different perspectives on how the system works.
“The racial disparities within our system, we have to work hard at making sure that that's eradicated,” he said. “We have to work hard at making sure that our criminal legal system is fair and equitable for everybody.”
