GIST: "For 41 years, Raymond Champagne steadfastly proclaimed he had been wrongly convicted of murder.
He spent 14,788 days in Massachusetts prisons devouring books and educating others, advocating for inmates’ rights, and becoming a self-taught jailhouse lawyer who would leave deadpan voice mails for his own attorney, gently reminding her that he was “still in prison.”
His relentlessness paid off in February 2020, when Mr. Champagne’s attorney unearthed evidence that police and prosecutors knew that he’d been framed. He was freed and ultimately exonerated.
In the 30 months since his release, Mr. Champagne channeled his own struggles to rejoin society into a force for good, helping launch the Exoneree Network, a group that helps the wrongfully convicted transition to life outside prison.
Then, last week, Mr. Champagne died in a motorcycle crash outside his Chelsea home. Police said Mr. Champagne, 67, apparently lost control of his motorcycle and struck a tree.
“It just seems so unfair,” said his wife, Mary “Molly” Baldwin, the founder and chief executive officer of Roca, a Chelsea-based nonprofit that works with young people to combat urban violence. “Since he got out, he actually had a really full 30 months. It’s not fair it wasn’t longer.”
Baldwin witnessed Mr. Champagne adjusting to life on the outside, his breaths slowly becoming deeper. On occasion, he mentioned to Baldwin, “‘God, I feel free today,’” she recalled. “And that was beautiful.”
For the injustice done to him, Mr. Champagne received nothing. In Massachusetts, the wrongfully convicted who have spent more than a year in prison can seek up to $1 million in state compensation. Mr. Champagne filed his claim in May and had not received any money.
Mr. Champagne’s death sent shock waves through New England’s tight-knit network of exonerees and their supporters. It came one day after the death of Shawn Drumgold, who served 14 years for a wrongful murder conviction and died of an aneurysm at age 57.
At Mr. Champagne’s memorial service Monday, friends described his willingness to adopt the struggles of others as his own. Mr. Champagne organized his fellow prisoners, fighting for better access to books and educational resources, pushing for policy changes, leading hunger strikes, and more.le intellect, and watched so many educational programs on public television that he joked he had a degree from PBS.
In 2019, Mr. Champagne was selected to take a Tufts University course studying the literature of confinement. The professor praised him as a “teacher for all of us,” for his introspective essays flecked with references to Oscar Wilde, the film “Cool Hand Luke,” and John Steinbeck’s character Tom Joad from “The Grapes of Wrath.”
“The true struggle of prison is (a) battle (that) is fought internally,” Champagne wrote. “Like Tom Joad’s Mother, she knew what to ask: ‘Did they hurt you boy … inside, where no one can see.’”
Mr. Champagne spent two-thirds of his life behind bars, but had an outsize impact on people’s lives. Consider Mr. Champagne as a father: His only child was born in 1975 a few months after he went to prison.
“It didn’t matter that he wasn’t physically here in front of me,” his daughter, Michele Sholler, said in an interview. “He gave me all of the things that a dad needs to give a daughter — support, encouragement, love. ... I even got yelled at sometimes like, ‘What are you doing, kid?’”
After his release, Mr. Champagne helped launch the Exoneree Network with Sean K. Ellis, who served nearly 22 years for robbery and murder before being freed and ultimately exonerated.
“There will never be another Ray Champagne,” Ellis said. “He was raw — as raw as they come — yet very respectful and very compassionate. Ray helped me with my healing process.”
Radha Natarajan, executive director of the New England Innocence Project, said that in prison, Mr. Champagne “didn’t just do the time, he fought the time” by spending “decades fighting the injustice of prison.”
Born in Springfield, Mr. Champagne lost his mother at age 12 to suicide, which he described as the most painful moment in his life. He was adrift, floating in and out of bars, hitchhiking back and forth across America, and getting in trouble.
By January 1975, Mr. Champagne was serving a sentence for robbery in Walpole state prison. He anticipated serving four to five years, but then a group of inmates killed a fellow prisoner, Stephen L. Curvin.
One of the inmates framed Mr. Champagne in part by planting a pair of bloody jeans in his cell. Mr. Champagne was convicted in 1979 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In Walpole, Mr. Champagne spent much of his time in the prison law library. So much so, that other inmates began asking for help, including Phillip Peters. Mr. Champagne pointed Peters to case law and coached him as he drafted an appeal, which overturned his conviction for home invasion.
“He was a kind soul in a cruel world,” Peters said last week. “Walpole was no place for kind souls, but he was an exception.”
In the mid 1980s, Mr. Champagne met Baldwin, who worked as a prisoners’ rights activist. “I fell in love with him the moment I met him,” Baldwin recalled.
They married on Feb. 8, 1986, in the chapel at Concord state prison, barbed wire visible through the windows. The couple had pinned their hopes to Mr. Champagne’s upcoming appeal, but that failed. Prison tested their relationship, but their love never ceased.
In 2011, Mr. Champagne got a new lawyer: Lisa M. Kavanaugh, director of the Innocence Program at the Committee for Public Counsel Services. Kavanaugh recalled being captivated by his wit and deep knowledge of his own case.
“I learned a lot from him,” Kavanaugh said. “I learned how to be a better lawyer by embracing and telling the whole story of what has happened to someone.”
For Mr. Champagne, that meant the story of Walpole in the late 1970s, which was so violent 15 inmates were killed in the span of five years. Law enforcement faced intense pressure to solve the cases.
It took Kavanaugh nearly a decade, but she ultimately found records that proved police and prosecutors learned that Champagne was innocent less than a year after his conviction.
Another inmate was accused of assaulting a fellow inmate and telling the victim that he helped kill a man in Walpole and framed someone with a pair of bloody jeans.
In April, Mr. Champagne eagerly boarded his first flight since 1974 to attend an Innocence Network conference in Phoenix. He was with his people: fellow exonerees, innocence lawyers, and Kavanaugh, who was by then a dear friend. Mr. Champagne joyfully took the window seat.
“I just want to see the sun,” he said, “dancing on top of the clouds.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/20/metro/raymond-champagne-who-served-41-years-wrongful-conviction-died-30-months-after-winning-freedom/
Correctional officer David Almeida said that at about 8:50 p.m., Curvin and Champagne, who was 23 years old, came to his desk asking for medication. Minutes later, Almeida saw Curvin and Champagne sitting at a table in a common area known as the “flats,” talking to each other. There were no sounds of a commotion or yelling, but not long after, Curvin approached Almeida and asked him to open the door to leave the tier. He was bleeding heavily. Almeida let him out and called for help. Curvin died at 10 p.m. in an ambulance heading to Norwood Hospital.
While Curvin was being removed, Almeida followed a blood trail that led to the cell of Ronald Roberts, whose cell was the 14th of 15 cells on the first floor tier. At about the same time, another officer saw three inmates, two of whom he recognized as Ronald Hogan and James Gallo, running up the stairs to the second floor tier of cells.
When Almeida got to Roberts’s cell, Roberts was mopping up blood. Almeida strip-searched Roberts while other officers searched the cell. They recovered the bloody mop, a paper bag with drops of blood, and a 4.5 inch drill bit with the end sharpened to a point. Roberts was taken to a segregation area. Meanwhile, officers began shaking down all the cells and common areas on Block B, which was comprised of three floors of cells.
The first cell to be searched was cell 13, which was next to Roberts’s cell and belonged to Champagne. Officers recovered a recently washed pair of jeans hanging over a chair. The right leg had what appeared to be a bloodstain. Blood-typing would later determine it was Type O blood—the same type as Curvin’s and Champagne’s blood.
On the second tier, officers found a nine-inch knife hidden in a hole behind a sink. The state would present it as evidence, but never linked it to the stabbing. The prosecution had never requested that knife be compared to Curvin’s wounds or be tested for the presence of blood.
Within the hour, state police, led by trooper John Nasuti, arrived to investigate. Nasuti met with every inmate on the block. After 3 a.m., he met with Roberts, who he said was “extremely emotionally upset, nervous...a bundle of nerves.” Roberts later said that Nasuti threatened to charge him with the murder unless he gave a statement.
Nasuti’s report said Roberts said that about an hour before the attack, he was in his cell with Curvin and another inmate, Donald Cormier, watching a movie. At 8:45 p.m., Roberts left his cell when three other inmates—Michael Flaherty, Gallo, and Hogan—called him out. Roberts said Flaherty told him he had a “beef” with Curvin and that he was going to “buff him up a little, punch him out.” One of them said that because Curvin was “kind of a big guy,” they would need three people to hold him down.
Roberts said this conversation took place in front of Champagne’s cell and that Roberts immediately left to get tobacco from the corrections officer on duty and then went to Cormier’s cell.
Days later, Roberts was taken out of the prison for an interview at the state police barracks in Foxboro. He now said he left his cell because he smelled marijuana. He said he saw Hogan and asked for a joint. While they were talking, he saw Flaherty, Gallo, an inmate named Carl Hoffer, and Champagne in Champagne’s cell. Roberts said he overheard Flaherty, Hogan, and Gallo talking outside of Champagne’s cell. Flaherty said he wanted to beat Curvin because Curvin had killed one of Flaherty’s friends on the street before entering the prison.
Roberts said that when he protested the use of his cell for the attack, Gallo told him not to worry because it was only going to be “a fist fight.” Roberts now quoted Gallo as saying that “the guy’s kind of big, so three of us are gonna have to run in on him, man and buff him up.” Roberts said that the three referred to Flaherty, Hogan, and Gallo. “I don’t know if Ray Champagne was even involved.”
Roberts said that while he was in Cormier’s cell, which was #3 and 11 cells removed from his own cell, he heard a commotion. He said he then saw Curvin coming toward the exit door, bleeding. He said he went back to his cell and while he was mopping up blood, he saw Hogan, Flaherty, and Gallo in Champagne’s cell, changing their clothes. Hogan called to Roberts to “send me over a pair of pants,” and Roberts did so. Roberts also said that officers took the mop from him and shook down his cell “looking for the knife.”
On November 24, 1978, Benjamin Butler, another inmate, gave a statement. On the night of the crime, he told investigators he wanted to talk, but not at that time. And although Butler sought a transfer out of the prison that same night, he was not moved until January 11, 1979—two days after the evidence was presented to a grand jury.
Butler said he ran downstairs to the first tier and saw Flaherty walking toward him from Roberts’s cell. “He was wearing a blue sweat suit and he had it folded in the front, holding onto it like he was hiding something,” Butler said. Flaherty walked within 10 feet of Butler. “I saw that he had blood on his left sleeve and also I saw blood on his lower left side of the jersey or top part of his sweat suit. I did not see Hogan or Champagne at that time. I did not see them come out of the [cell] either.”
Butler would later testify at trial that this statement was totally false—that it was impossible to see what he claimed to have seen because the walkways on the tiers outside of the rows of cells on tiers 2 and 3 obscured any view of cells on the first floor, where the murder occurred. He later explained that he had been at Walpole for 28 months and he wanted to get out. Butler never saw Champagne outside his cell, he said and “didn’t see a damned one of those men do nothing to nobody.”
However, the grand jury that indicted Flaherty, Hogan, Gallo, and Champagne never heard that recantation. Instead, the grand jury heard Trooper Nasuti repeat Butler’s original statement, even though Nasuti had been on the third tier many times and knew that it was impossible to see the cell where Curvin was stabbed from Butler’s cell.
The prosecution gained another witness in April 1979 when James Bernardini came forward. Bernardini was in the third of the 15 cells on the first floor and 11 cells away from cell 14 where Curvin was stabbed. On the night of the murder, Bernardini was interviewed. He had not seen Curvin and had no information about what happened.
One month later, Bernardini was paroled from Walpole to a halfway house. However, he soon walked away without permission. A few weeks later, Bernardini was arrested in Dedham, Massachusetts for violating parole. He was taken to Billerica House of Correction where he saw Gallo, who reported that Roberts was “ratting” on Gallo in the Curvin murder.
Bernardini escaped from Billerica by impersonating an inmate who was due to be released. Within weeks, however, he was arrested again and sent back to Billerica. With about two years remaining on his prison sentence, Bernardini notified the prosecution that he wanted to talk. On April 11, 1979, Bernardini gave a two-page statement to Trooper Nasuti. Bernardini said he was in Jack Hurney’s cell (cell 4) with inmate Jack Egan when Champagne came in and asked Hurney for “the pick he was holding for him.” A pick was the term inmates used to describe any weapon that was cylindrical and sharped to a point like an ice pick.
Bernardini said Hurney gave Champagne a 12-inch long sharpened piece of metal with a white cloth handle. When Hurney asked what was going on, Champagne said, “Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” according to Bernardini. A short time later, Flaherty walked by, headed in the direction of the end of the tier that ended with cell 15. Bernardini said Champagne came back to the cell and said for them to stay inside and that “you didn’t hear or see anything.”
Ten minutes later, Bernardini said Curvin walked by slowly, with blood gushing from him. Not long after, Flaherty came by with a blue and white bathrobe, which was not what he had been wearing earlier, Bernardini said.
A week later, Bernardini said that Champagne came by Bernardini’s cell and commented on the fact that Flaherty, Hogan, and Gallo had been removed from the tier, but he hadn’t. According to Bernardini, Champagne said that Flaherty took Champagne’s bathrobe to cover his clothing after the attack and that guards had taken a pair of jeans from his cell.
Two or three days later, Bernardini said, Champagne said that Curvin wasn’t supposed to be killed. Champagne said that Flaherty, Hogan, and Gallo were in the cell with Curvin when “a beef broke out. Curvin was so big that he bulled his way out”, at which point Champagne, who was outside acting as a lookout, pulled out a weapon, stuck Curvin in the cheek with it, and pushed him back into the cell, Bernardini said.
Bernardini said that Champagne said that one of the weapons used was a sharpened butter knife that was broken up and flushed down the toilet. Champagne, he said, had hidden the other weapons in his cell and they were not found during the shakedown.
Champagne, Gallo, and Hogan went to trial in August 1979. Flaherty had been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. The principal evidence against them was the testimony of Bernardini, Roberts, and Trooper Nasuti.
Bernardini’s testimony tracked his statement, although the trial judge excluded the reference to Champagne’s alleged statement that they disposed of one weapon in a toilet and hid the others in his cell.
Although the prosecution and defense questioned Bernardini about his prior convictions, no one asked him whether he had any pending cases.
At trial, Roberts testified that Flaherty, Hogan, and Gallo—but not Champagne—talked to him about their plan to attack Curvin. He also said that when he returned to his cell, he saw Hogan, Gallo and Flaherty changing clothes in Champagne’s cell while Champagne was sitting on his bed.
But for the first time, Roberts said he recognized the blood-stained pants recovered from Champagne’s cell as Champagne’s pants. Roberts testified that Trooper Nasuti threatened to charge him with the crime unless he gave a statement.
The prosecution also called Butler, who recanted his initial statement, and said he saw nothing happen. Then, through the testimony of Nasuti, Butler was impeached by his initial statement—even though it was physically impossible for his first statement to have been true because of the layout of the three tiers of cells. Butler also testified that Nasuti threatened to send him back to Walpole unless he testified for the prosecution.
The medical examiner, Dr. George Katsas, testified Curvin was stabbed with a knife, contradicting Bernardini’s claim that Champagne armed himself with a pick and later admitted stabbing Curvin in the chest with that pick. Katsas said Curvin’s wounds “are all consistent with knife wounds” and “are not pick wounds.”
Officer Almeida contradicted Bernardini’s testimony that Curvin charged out of the cell and was pushed back in after Champagne stabbed him, saying that he did not hear any sounds of a struggle or notice any movement in or out of the cells that night.
Inmate Carl Hoffer testified that on the night of the crime, he heard a noise and went to the front of his cell, which was the 11th cell. There, he saw Curvin, who said, “What the [obscenity] is going on? Ronny just stuck me.” Hoffer said Roberts was known in Walpole as “Ronny.”
Inmate Daniel Cormier testified that on the night of the stabbing, Roberts came to Cormier’s cell and asked for a knife and that Cormier gave it to him.
On August 24, 1979, the jury convicted all three men of first-degree murder. All were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Champagne filed two motions for a new trial prior to the resolution of his direct appeal. Both claimed that the prosecution had withheld information about picks recovered from the first tier in the immediate aftermath of the stabbing. The first, relating to a pick pulled from the trash, was denied after the prosecutor said he was unaware of it.
The second concerned a pick discovered in Hogan’s cell. Champagne’s lawyer learned from a prison officer named Kilnapp that he discovered the pick. The trial prosecutor contended he had never seen that report, but also claimed that he disclosed that information to the defense. Although the defense attorney said the information had not been disclosed, the motion was denied.
In January 1982, Flaherty pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 to 20 years in prison. At the time, Flaherty said that there “was somebody else involved, but that the person who was involved is like—I fear for my life and if I say who was involved and all that, I have to live in prison. Retribution will be there.”
In January 1987, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the denials of the motions for new trial as well as the jury convictions.
In 2018 and 2019, the prosecution provided documents to Champagne, who was represented by Lisa Kavanaugh, director of the Committee for Public Counsel Services Innocence Program.
Some of the documents had been provided to Flaherty’s lawyer prior to Flaherty's guilty plea. None had been disclosed to the lawyers for Hogan, Gallo, or Champagne. Among them was a report of the discovery of the pick in Hogan’s cell. That report said that an officer Kilner—not Kilnapp—discovered the pick. The existence of that report strongly suggested that the prosecutor’s claim of never having seen the report was false.
The documents included statements from inmates that had not been disclosed to the defense. Donald Cormier said that he gave Roberts a knife on the night of the crime and that Roberts said he “was going to get” Curvin. Cormier said that almost immediately after Roberts took the knife, there was a commotion “and an inmate walked by bleeding profusely.”
Inmate Michael Fitzpatrick said that a couple of days before Curvin was stabbed, an inmate asked him to tell Curvin that his package of drugs had arrived and he could have it in a couple of days. Fitzpatrick said that when he relayed the message to Curvin, Roberts was present. Fitzpatrick and a third inmate, Wayne Rurtell, also described occasions when Roberts came to them trying to obtain knives.
Two other inmates had given statements on the night of the murder that Butler was on the third tier with them at the time of the crime and could not have seen the events on the first floor.
The documents also showed that as of September 1980—just over a year after Champagne was convicted—the prosecution was aware that in June 1980, an inmate accused Roberts and other inmates of sexually assaulting him. The inmate said he did not immediately report the assault because Roberts said that if he talked, “the same thing would happen to him” that happened to an inmate at Walpole. Roberts said that he had stabbed an inmate and gave the bloody pants to another inmate, whom Roberts then blamed.
Champagne’s defense team also got an affidavit from Flaherty’s father, Michael Flaherty Sr., who spoke to them several years after his son's death in 2009. Flaherty’s father said he was present at meetings with Flaherty and his defense attorney prior to his guilty plea. At the meetings, Flaherty said he wanted to make a statement that would have exonerated Champagne. According to the elder Flaherty, his son “always insisted that Ray Champagne was not involved in the incident” and that “the one individual who stabbed Curvin was not Ray Champagne.”
In October 2019, Kavanaugh filed a motion for a new trial based on the newly discovered evidence. “For forty-one years, Raymond Champagne has steadfastly maintained that he had no role whatsoever in the stabbing death of Stephen Curvin,” the motion said. “Every new piece of evidence that has come to light since his trial supports this position and shows that justice was not done.”
On February 18, 2020, after the prosecution said it had no objection to the motion, Norfolk County Superior Court Judge Thomas vacated Champagne’s conviction and ordered his release. On July 13, 2020, the prosecution dismissed the charge. After his release, Champagne worked with exonerees Sean Ellis and Victor Rosario to create the Exoneree Network, which supported wrongfully convicted people upon their release from prison. He died July 12, 2022."
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
