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WHEN FIREFIGHTERS ARRIVED at 102 Belair Street in Brockton, Massachusetts, in the predawn hours of April 17, 2003, they observed two teenagers poking their heads out of second-floor windows. One of the teens was 17-year-old Frances Choy, who, awakened by her mother鈥檚 scream of 鈥淔rances, there鈥檚 a fire!鈥� had called 911 on her cell phone. The other was Kenneth Choy, Frances鈥檚 16-year-old nephew. Inside the house, a fire was burning with such intensity that it had melted wall fixtures, and thick smoke had trapped Frances, Kenneth, and Frances鈥檚 parents鈥擩immy and Anne Choy鈥攊n their bedrooms.

Anne Choy would be pronounced dead later that morning at Good Samaritan Hospital, but as a headline in the next day鈥檚 Boston Globe made clear, things could have been much worse: 鈥淧olice Say Teen鈥檚 Call about Fire Saved Three Lives.鈥� (Jimmy Choy would eventually also die as a result of the fire.) On the day after that, however, a different narrative began to emerge. The Plymouth County District Attorney鈥檚 Office alleged that Frances and Kenneth had actually been the ones who started the fire, conspiring to murder the elder Choys by burning down the house.

Kenneth Choy had come from Hong Kong to live with the Choys when he was 13, following the suicide of his father, who was Jimmy鈥檚 son. After the fire, investigators searched his bedroom and found instructions he鈥檇 written about how to burn down the house, including dousing areas of it with gasoline. But he told police that it was Frances who was behind the fire, because she 鈥渨anted better parents.鈥� He claimed that his aunt had grown exasperated with his refusals to set the blaze, so had done it herself. Both teenagers were ultimately charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Frances, a quiet and gentle rule-follower who鈥檇 never been in trouble and was working her way toward college, was a most unlikely suspect. Yet prosecutors built their case around the idea that she was actually a cold and manipulative mastermind who鈥檇 orchestrated the plot to kill her parents. At two different trials, the prosecution was unable to convince deadlocked juries of Frances鈥檚 guilt, but the third time was the charm. In 2011, eight years after the fire, a jury found her guilty. She was given a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. But here鈥檚 the thing: She was innocent.

In Massachusetts, a first-degree murder conviction triggers an automatic appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court. Any appeal is an uphill climb, a long and complicated process with a narrow chance of success. An appeal of a murder conviction is an uphill climb into hurricane headwinds. This is true regardless of whether the defendant happens to have been wrongfully convicted. In Frances鈥檚 case, there were transcripts from her three trials to pore over, police and fire investigation reports, state police crime lab reports, photographs, and witness interviews. The task of gathering and sifting through all of this for Frances鈥檚 appeal fell to the Boston attorney John J. Barter, a solo practitioner working out of a four-story brick-and-stone building in the North End, whom the court appointed to the case. As Barter continued to examine the files, it became clear to him that Frances had been scapegoated. That she was, in fact, not guilty. To help prove that in a court of law, Barter eventually sought the help of the Boston College Innocence Program.

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SINCE 1989, MORE THAN 2,700 PEOPLE in the country have been exonerated after being wrongfully convicted of felony crimes鈥攁n average of nearly 90 a year. Collectively, they served more than 24,600 years in prison. These are just the cases that we know about, the ones that garnered headlines and TV news coverage of exonerees who, after spending decades behind bars, walked through prison gates and collapsed into the arms of loved ones.

IN THE HOURS AFTER THE FIRE, investigators questioned both Frances and Kenneth at the Brockton hospital where they were treated for smoke inhalation. That evening, police then questioned the two surviving Choys yet again, this time at police headquarters. No audio or video recordings were made of the interrogations. This, a Brockton police detective would later testify, was because the station wasn鈥檛 equipped to record interviews. Officers would also testify that they鈥檇 destroyed their notes after preparing their typed reports.

SHARON BECKMAN GREW UP IN ILLINOIS, the daughter of a plumber and a stay-at-home mom, and her childhood was the kind that politicians evoke when they want to harken back to simpler times. Beckman鈥檚 passion was competitive swimming (she would one day swim nonstop across the English Channel), and as a young girl she believed that being a swim coach was her calling. But after reading听To Kill a Mockingbird鈥攖he American classic of a small-town attorney in Alabama who represents a Black man wrongly accused of rape鈥攈er life was on a different trajectory. She would be a criminal defense attorney. The book was a 鈥渃omplete moral awakening for me of the realities of life in America,鈥� Beckman said. 鈥淭he idea that an innocent person could be wrongly convicted and sentenced to death because of the color of his skin literally shocked me to my core. It was not a thing I had ever thought about before. That was my white privilege.鈥�

AFTER FRANCES CHOY WAS CONVICTED in 2011, the court appointed her case to John Barter for appeal. For help, he turned to a friend and colleague, Sharon Beckman. 鈥淚鈥檓 representing a client who鈥檚 innocent,鈥� he told her. Beckman and Whitmore reviewed the case and promptly agreed to join as co-counsel in 2017. (The BCIP is very selective about the cases it accepts. Whitmore estimated that it declines more than 90 percent of the time.)

In trying to prove a client鈥檚 innocence, it鈥檚 not necessary to identify someone else as the actual perpetrator. But it helps. In the case of Frances Choy, the defense team was able to track down a new witness who鈥檇 been overlooked by the trial attorney. And this person made an earth-shaking claim鈥攖hat Kenneth Choy had admitted to the witness that he was the one who鈥檇 set the fire that killed Jimmy and Anne Choy. According to the witness, Kenneth said that he and his mother (who lived in Hong Kong) were 鈥渕ad at the Choys because they kept asking for more money.鈥�

The investigation by Barter and the BCIP turned up more. One of the key arguments Plymouth County prosecutors had made to implicate Frances was that gasoline had been found on her sweatpants. But Frances鈥檚 team found an expert who said that the state鈥檚 lab tests had actually not shown evidence of gasoline. And the insistence by police officers that their interrogation rooms were not set up to record interviews? The attorneys and law students found a former Brockton police detective who swore otherwise. There was still more. Frances鈥檚 team was at last able to get the prosecutors鈥� entire case file, including material that hadn鈥檛 been given to Frances鈥檚 original attorney.

Among the bombshell finds in the file was an email that Assistant District Attorney Karen O鈥橲ullivan had sent to a detective the night before he was to testify in Frances鈥檚 third trial. In the email, O鈥橲ullivan included a script of what the detective should say on the stand, including testimony he had previously sworn under oath was not correct. Also in the file were handwritten notes from the detective鈥檚 interview with Frances鈥攏otes that the detective had previously testified were destroyed. Then there were the police reports from before the fire in which Jimmy Choy had gone to the authorities with his suspicions that Kenneth had been dealing drugs, information that might have more firmly established a motive for the boy to have set the fire.

But the most staggering disclosure came not from physical evidence or testimony from new witnesses, but from emails that Barter had fought for five years to get Plymouth County prosecutors to release.The emails, spanning the years 2006 to 2009, were between O鈥橲ullivan and John Bradley, the two Plymouth County assistant district attorneys involved in prosecuting Frances Choy. In a motion filed in January 2020, Barter and the BCIP characterized the communications this way: 鈥淭hese emails included 鈥榡okes鈥� about Asian people, photographs depicting Asian people in a demeaning way, and commentary specifically about Frances, alleging that she was engaged in an incestuous relationship with her nephew and mocking her.鈥� In one of the emails, drawing upon the fact that Frances鈥檚 extended family, united in their support for her, typically sat in the rear of the courtroom during hearings, the prosecutors sneered that, at an upcoming proceeding, she would be 鈥渨earing a cheongsam and will be the one doing origami in the back of the courtroom.鈥� In another, Frances鈥檚 face was Photoshopped onto the body of a Girl Scout standing in front of a burning house. 鈥淣ext time,鈥� read the caption, 鈥渂uy the [expletive] cookies.鈥� The racial bias explicit in the trial prosecutors鈥� emails, the defense team argued, amounted to 鈥渟tructural constitutional error鈥� that, by itself, demanded a reversal of the convictions.