'Trial 4': Where is Sean Ellis now? After being tried four times for murder, Boston man looks to a new future
Netflix's new limited docuseries 'Trial 4' focuses on the story of a man who says he was wrongly convicted of murdering a police officer when he was just 19 years old. The eight-part docuseries will feature Sean Ellis as he faces his fourth trial — 25 years after he was first tried in 1995 — as he may end up going back to prison. Ellis had been previously sentenced to life and was released when new evidence came to light.
Ellis had spent 22 years in prison after being convicted of the 1993 murder of Boston police detective, John Mulligan. He was put on trial three times within the space of a year, and now faces his fourth trial — which could see him back in prison for life. After his first three trials for armed robbery and first-degree murder, Ellis, aged 19 at the time, was found guilty in 1995 and sentenced to life.
On January 4, 1995, Ellis' first trial began. After eight days of deliberation, while the jury found Ellis guilty on firearm indictments, they remained deadlocked on his other charges — armed robbery and first-degree murder — and the court declared a mistrial. Ellis' retrial began in March 1995, and again, the following month, the jury reported a deadlock with the court declaring a second mistrial. Finally, in September 1995, during his third trial, Ellis was found guilty of the remaining charges and he was sentenced to life in prison.
In 1998, in light of news reports that Mulligan, and his colleagues — who also interfered in Mulligan's murder investigation — Kenneth Acerra, John Brazil, and Walter Robinson were, in fact, corrupt, led Ellis to file a motion for his new trial which was denied. His second motion for a new trial was accepted in March 2013 and the trial took place in 2018.
At the fourth trial, Ellis was represented by Rosemary Scapicchio, who had been involved with Ellis' case for a long time. In December 2018, Suffolk County District Attorney John Pappas announced that the murder charges against him were formally dropped and that he would not have to be retried. The prosecutors said they did not drop the case because they believed Ellis to be innocent, but because they did not believe the case to be strong. This led Scappicchio to criticize the prosecutors for still presenting her client as guilty despite evidence that Boston police detectives who worked the case were later found guilty themselves of corruption.
Now a free man, Sean Ellis hopes to move forward with his life. He told WGBH Radio's Phillip Martin, "I’m not the only one that has gone through this horror. Wrongful convictions is an epidemic." Martin also said that Ellis is not bitter over what happened to him in spite of spending half his life in prison. Ellis is living with his mother and his sister in Lynn, Massachusetts, and is working a full-time job while hoping to go back to university.
As for Detective John Mulligan's family, his brother, Richard Mulligan remains convinced that Ellis murdered his brother, but is not keen to talk to most reporters about this case.
'Trial 4' is now streaming on Netflix.