By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Two Black men wrongly accused of the 1989 murder of a pregnant white woman in Boston have received a $150,000 settlement from the city in a high-profile case that had deepened rifts between the local police force and the Black community.
BY THE NUMBERS
Alan Swanson will get $50,000 and Willie Bennett will get $100,000 from the settlement, Boston officials said on Tuesday.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu had issued a formal apology in late 2023 on behalf of the city to the two men after the release of an HBO series, “Murder in Boston,” that dissected the killing and its aftermath, which exacerbated the city’s long-standing racial tensions.
Swanson and Bennett were not formally charged with the murder of the pregnant woman, Carol Stuart. But they were arrested and publicly branded suspects after the actual culprit, Stuart’s husband, told police that she had been murdered by a Black man who he said had abducted the couple, according to local news reports.
When the husband’s story later began to unravel, he stopped his car on a local bridge and jumped off, killing himself. His brother confessed to helping hide the gun used in the staged murder.
CONTEXT
In the immediate years following the 2020 killing of George Floyd, a Black Minneapolis man who died after a white police official knelt on his neck for several minutes, some U.S. cities confronted past wrongs inflicted on residents of color by their criminal justice system.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Dan Burns)
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