November 12, 1992 

 STATE TO PAY WRONGLY JAILED MAN TODAY
 Don Aucoin, Globe Staff 

 Six years ago this month, Bobby Joe Leaster walked out of prison a free 
 man after spending more than 15 years behind bars for a murder he did not 
 commit. Today, Bobby Joe Leaster will walk out of the State House a 
 financially comfortable man. In a highly unusual act of contrition by the 
 state, a group of lawmakers will present Leaster with an annuity plan 
 worth more than $1 million. For Leaster, it is a second happy ending to a 
 remarkable story. "This is the final piece of the tragedy that happened to 
 me 21 years ago," Leaster said yesterday in a telephone interview. "I feel 
 as happy as when I got out six years ago."

 The award culminates a long struggle by several state legislators to 
 acknowledge the state's "moral obligation" to Leaster, who won his freedom 
 after a 1986 Boston Globe Magazine article prompted a witness to come 
 forward with evidence that showed he was not guilty.

 Leaster, 42, now lives in a South End roominghouse and earns $375 a week 
 as a youth counselor for the city of Boston. He does not plan to quit his 
 job, even though he will receive a check for $75,000 later this week and 
 will be paid $2,500 per month from the annuity.

 "I'm going down to Alabama to take care of my dad, set him up with a 
 house," Leaster said. Then he will begin looking for a house in Boston 
 where he can live with his 4-year-old son, Robert, and the boy's mother.

 Leaster also plans to establish a fund for his son's college tuition.

 The nightmare began for Leaster on Sept. 27, 1970, when he was arrested on 
 a street corner in the South End and charged with the murder of a Roxbury 
 variety store owner named Levi Whiteside.

 Leaster was convicted on flimsy evidence and sent to prison at 21. He 
 would not be a free man again until he was 36, after nine years of pro 
 bono work by a father-and-son team.

 A Boston Globe Magazine article in 1986 about his case prompted a new 
 witness to the murder to come forward and tell police that Leaster did not 
 resemble either of the two men he saw fleeing the scene. A new trial was 
 ordered in November 1986 and a month later the Suffolk County district 
 attorney dismissed the indictments and Leaster was freed.

 To Christopher J. Muse, the attorney who, along with his father, Robert, 
 devoted endless hours to the case from 1977 until Leaster was finally 
 free, the annuity represents "justice being done."

 When Leaster learned that he would be receiving the state-funded annuity, 
 he immediately offered to make a payment to the Muses -- an offer they 
 declined.

 "But I told Bobby that every time we go to a bar or a restaurant, he'll be 
 stuck with the bill," Christopher Muse said with a laugh yesterday.

 To Rep. Thomas Finneran (D-Mattapan), who fought for the compensation for 
 years along with Rep. Kevin Fitzgerald (D-Mission Hill) and former state 
 Sen. Royal Bolling Sr., the annuity is the state's acknowledgment that "an 
 innocent guy got caught in the gears and was almost ground away to 
 nothing."

 Both Finneran and Muse marveled at Leaster's lack of bitterness at having 
 15 years of his life taken away from him, but Leaster himself made it 
 clear he has no room for rancor in his life.

 "I had no bitterness when I first got out, and I damn sure don't have any 
 now," he said. "I don't have time for that bitterness and hostility."

 The annuity represents the first time since the 1950s that the state has 
 compensated a person who was wrongly incarcerated.

 "I was really struggling for the last year," Leaster said. "But all that 
 is over. I'm finally going to be financially secure. Now I can go on with 
 my life as usual, just a little more comfortably."