On February 26, 1993, between 8:30-9 p.m., Keith Robinson was shot outside the Mission Hill Housing Projects in Boston, Massachusetts, and was pronounced dead a short while later at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Robinson, who was 26 years old, was a drug dealer and had been shot in the right eye, chest, and right thigh.
Officers with the Boston Police Department investigated the shooting, interviewing potential witnesses.
Timothy Hall told police that he had come to the neighborhood to buy heroin from Robinson when he saw a man emerge from the crowd, confront Robinson, and then begin firing. He described the shooter as a Black man, 5’ 9” tall, 23-26 years old, and weighing 160-180 pounds. Hall also said the gunman was wearing a black knit hat, a red jacket, dark pants, and dark shoes.
Hall viewed a photo array that night and selected a photo of 25-year-old Stephen Pina. He told police, “I think that’s the person,” and said his confidence level was six out of ten. Court documents don’t indicate why the police put Pina’s photograph in the array. At the time of the shooting, Pina also sold drugs in the Mission Hill area, but there was no evidence that Pina and Robinson had any conflict or knew each other.
Two days after the shooting, Pina went to a police substation and spoke with Officer James O’Loughlin of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), asking why the police were looking for him. O’Loughlin said his name had come up in the investigation and that he had seen Pina in the area on the night of the shooting. Pina said, “Maybe I was there that night but I didn’t shoot him.” Pina also told O'Loughlin that he heard the murder weapon had been found.
Early in the investigation, a woman told police she had heard the shots and seen a man running down her street. She said the man slipped on the ice and a gun tumbled from his sweatshirt as he fell. The police found the weapon in a snowbank, and ballistics testing said it was the gun used to shoot Robinson. Police traced the gun to Robert Grady, who said that his son, Brian Johnson, had stolen the weapon.
On March 15, 1993, Pina had another apparent run-in with O’Loughlin, who would later testify that he had heard Pina wanted to take a “pot shot” at him. According to O’Loughlin, Pina pointed toward the location of the shooting and noted that the officer had seen what he had done there and “nothing came of it.” The officer said Pina got into a maroon Chevrolet and drove off.
Debra Annas came to the attention of the Boston police in April 1993, after an unrelated murder of one of her friends. She told police that she had been present when Robinson was shot. She viewed an array that contained Pina’s photograph and did not make an identification.
On September 8, 1993, police staged an arrest at a drug house, taking Annas into custody and allowing Detective John McCarthy to meet with her. Annas identified Pina as a person she knew from the neighborhood but did not say he shot Robinson. The second time she met with McCarthy, she identified Pina as “the person that shot Keith.”
Police arrested Pina on October 6, 1993, and charged him with murder and unlawful possession of ammunition and a firearm. At the time, Pina was living in Georgia, and he returned to Boston to turn himself in.
Pina’s first trial in Suffolk County Superior Court ended with a hung jury and mistrial on March 9, 1995. His retrial began on January 12, 1996, before Judge James McDaniel. Pina was represented by Bruce Carroll, who took over the case after Pina’s original attorney had withdrawn after the mistrial.
Hall testified that he had gone to Mission Hill to buy heroin. He said he had bought drugs from Robinson once before but didn’t know his name. Hall said that while he and Robinson were negotiating a deal, a man came out of the crowd and walked toward them. Hall said that when the man was about 10 feet away, he appeared to sing or rap at Robinson: “Give me your shit or I’ll bust you with my click.”
Hall said the man grabbed Robinson by the collar or his lapel. Robinson spun around, Hall said, and the other man fired four shots and then ran north.
At trial, Hall identified Pina as the shooter. Hall was asked about his initial equivocation when viewing Pina’s photo. He said that he had always been “a hundred percent certain” but “was starting to have second thoughts and just didn’t want to get involved all of a sudden.”
Hall testified that he looked at between 16 and 20 photos. (An officer testified the photo array contained eight photos.) In addition, Hall testified that he viewed a photo array with Pina’s photo between the initial viewing and the trial.
Annas was not available as a witness when the state first called her to testify. A prosecutor told Judge McDaniel that she was “sick,” without elaboration. Carroll requested more information on why Annas was sick, but Judge McDaniel denied the request.
When Annas later testified, she said that she had known Pina for “maybe a year and a half, two years” and had been buying drugs from him for a couple of months before the shooting, including “every night” in February.
Annas said she and “Mickey” went to Mission Hill to buy heroin. She spoke with Robinson, but he didn’t have the drugs she wanted. At about 9 p.m., she was standing near Robinson, when she saw a “maroonish color” car pull up and slam on the brakes. Annas testified that Pina got out on the passenger side and approached Robinson. She testified that the two men began to argue. She said she heard something about drugs but wasn’t listening to the whole conversation. Annas testified that Pina went back to the car, retrieved a gun, and then walked quickly toward Robinson while “singing some kind of … rap song.” Annas said she backed up into a hallway of one of the apartment buildings and saw a flash just before Pina shot Robinson in the face. She said she heard more shots. After Pina left, Annas said, she stood near Robinson until the police arrived about a minute later.
Annas testified that she saw BHA Officer Yvette Moschella at the scene holding rosary beads. (In her testimony, Moschella denied this occurred, and she said that she never saw Annas near Robinson’s body.)
Annas also testified that she did not speak to the police on the night of the shooting because, “you don’t run to the police in the projects.”
Carroll cross-examined Annas about the reliability of her identification and also questioned her about her drug use. According to a later court filing, “It was undisputed that Annas had a serious drug use problem and was high on crack cocaine during both photo arrays.”
Linda Taylor, who sold drugs on Pina’s behalf, testified that she was with Pina and Thomas Davis, who was also a drug dealer, on the day of the murder. She said she heard Pina tell Davis: “This is the day I’m going to set an example to everyone that owes me. I want my money.”
At Pina’s first trial, Taylor had testified that this conversation took place a month before the shooting. When asked about her previous testimony, Taylor denied that she ever said that.
At around 5 p.m. on February 26, Officers Moschella and O’Loughlin had encountered two men on Annunciation Road, a few blocks from where Robinson was killed. One of the men, who was bleeding badly from a wound near his right eye, said he had been robbed and pointed toward a man entering a nearby apartment. Moschella testified that she could see the face of the alleged robber. O’Loughlin said he could not.
Both officers testified that the alleged robber was Black, with a medium build, about 5’10” tall, weighing about 160-170 pounds, and wearing a red jacket.
After Robinson’s death, Moschella and O’Loughlin told a detective that they believed Robinson was the alleged robber they had seen on Annunciation Road. At trial, they testified that there were physical similarities, but Moschella also testified that she had never seen the robber before and she was “positive” that it wasn’t Robinson, who she said she had met once in February 1993.
Moschella testified that the bleeding man refused to give officers his name and declined medical attention. She said he told the officers, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it myself.”
McCarthy testified about the investigation. During cross-examination, Carroll sought to question him about Johnson and the stolen gun. Police reports said that Johnson had the gun by late February 1993, and that a friend of Johnson, Shawn Wright, also had access to the gun. After a motion by prosecutors, Judge McDaniel struck this line of questioning, ruling that Carroll didn’t have enough to support theories of a third-party culprit or an inadequate investigation.
At the time of the shooting, Pina owned a 1981 Chevrolet Chevette. The state and defense stipulated that the car was red, although Moschell and O’Loughlin testified that the car was maroon.
During closing arguments, the prosecutor praised the state’s witnesses for their “courage” in testifying against Pina when between 15 and 25 other witnesses had failed to cooperate with the investigation. Carroll moved for a mistrial, arguing that the prosecutor had suggested that these other witnesses had stayed silent out of fear for Pina. Judge McDaniel denied the motion.
After six days of deliberation, the jury convicted Pina of first-degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm. He received a sentence of life in prison.
Pina appealed, arguing that the prosecution’s closing argument was improper. The appeal also said Judge McDaniel’s jury instructions were flawed.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts affirmed the conviction on October 20, 1999. It said the prosecutor’s closing argument on the courage of the state’s witnesses was valid because “ample evidence existed to support the prosecutor’s characterization of pervasive fear in the Mission Hill housing development.”
Pina then turned to the federal courts, filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, on December 13, 2002. The petition asserted that Judge McDaniel’s trial rulings and jury instructions had violated his right to a fair trial. He also said that Carroll had been ineffective for failing to call Tomorrow Vailes as an alibi witness, who would have testified that Pina was sick with the flu on February 26, 1993, and they spent the day and evening sleeping and resting at her apartment.
A judge denied the petition on December 8, 2006, and the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower-court ruling on May 12, 2009.
In 2014, Pina was granted approval to conduct DNA testing on the murder weapon and Robinson’s jacket. Cellmark Forensics tested the items in 2015. The testing on the gun was inconclusive because an insufficient amount of DNA was detected. The testing on the jacket identified a major and minor contributor. Robinson’s DNA was consistent with the major contributor. Pina was excluded as a major contributor. Cellmark could not make an assessment on the minor contributor because of an insufficient amount of DNA on the jacket.
In 2018, Cellmark’s data was sent to Cybergenetics, which used probabilistic genotyping to analyze the information. The company said in a report that its analysis excluded Pina as a contributor to the DNA on the grip, cylinder, and barrel of the pistol. An analysis by the company in 2022 excluded Pina as a contributor to the DNA on the jacket’s lapel and hood.
On November 18, 2020, Pina’s attorneys with the Committee for Public Counsel Services Innocence Program—Jill Tessier and Ira Gant, who was replaced by Lisa Kavanaugh in 2024—filed a motion for a new trial. The motion included the new DNA evidence and also asserted that the state had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence that undermined Annas’s credibility and pointed to other persons as the real perpetrators.
At the time of the second trial, Annas was in a state mental hospital, after attempting to commit suicide while in prison on a probation violation. She had testified that she was incarcerated, but the defense was not aware of her psychiatric disorder and her long history of mental illness. A police detective knew she had been hospitalized, and a prosecutor had to obtain a writ of habeas corpus to compel Annas to testify. Pina had discovered evidence of Annas’s hospitalization with the help of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
At 10:40 p.m. on the night Robinson was killed, a man reported that his maroon Nissan had been stolen. The police report, written a day later, said the carjacking occurred at 10 p.m. Two weeks later, on March 12, 1993, the police stopped the Nissan while investigating a robbery. Inside the vehicle were Johnson and Anthony Woods. Johnson had a wound on his forehead and a healing scar over his right eye, consistent with the injuries received by the robbery victim on Annunciation Road. Pina’s motion noted that Woods’s booking photograph “bore a close resemblance to Pina.” None of this information was disclosed to Carroll.
The new trial motion included a report from Dr. Nancy Franklin, a professor at Stonybrook University and expert on eyewitness identification. Her report said that Annas’s identification of Pina was flawed in several ways, and the arrays she viewed were administered by officers who knew that Pina was a suspect. In addition, Franklin said that Annas’s mental health and substance abuse problems would have affected her ability to make a credible identification.
The motion also included a report by Dr. Emily Clionsky, an internist and psychiatrist, that said Annas’s substance abuse and psychiatric issues could have affected her ability to form reliable memories.
After the motion was filed, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office allowed Pina’s attorneys access to the prosecution files. Working together, the two sides also obtained additional records regarding Annas’s hospitalization at the time of the trial.
The district attorney’s Integrity Review Bureau conducted its own review of the case and met with Pina’s attorneys in October 2021. After the meeting, the district attorney’s office and the Boston police re-interviewed McCarthy and O’Loughlin, and also re-interviewed Kristian Ferrer, who had been present at the shooting and was injured by a stray bullet.
Ferrer had been interviewed in the hours after the shooting and declined to look at a photo array, but he did tell police that the shooter was a “heavy build Black male” who had gotten out of a four-door maroon car and was “rapping” about a gun. In an interview on November 17, 2021, Ferrer said that he was certain that Pina was not the shooter, because the shooter was taller and stronger than Pina.
On December 21, 2021, the state filed a response that said it had failed to disclose evidence regarding Annas’s medical issues and that this evidence could have been helpful to Pina’s defense. “At the very least, this information may have been used by the defendant to attempt to cast doubt on whether a jury could find Annas credible, reliable, or biased,” the response said.
The state also said the undisclosed evidence about Johnson, Woods, the stolen gun, and the stolen car “may have bolstered” Pina’s argument that other persons committed the crime. “It defies logic that these are mere coincidences,” the state wrote.
The state’s response said that an evidentiary hearing should be held on these two issues, but it did not consent to granting Pina a new trial.
Prior to the hearing, Judge Peter Krupp ordered Pina’s release from prison, which took place on March 9, 2022.
“My main goal from day one has always been to prove my innocence and get exonerated,” Pina told The Boston Globe . “All I want to do is clear my name and let it be known that I’m innocent. That vindication is not only for me; it’s for my mother and my son and his mother.”
The evidentiary hearing began on May 24, 2022, with additional testimony given on October 17-18, and final arguments on March 24, 2023. Franklin, Clionsky, and Carroll testified on behalf of Pina. Dr. David Kroll testified for the state that Annas’s diagnosis did not necessarily indicate problems with memory or cognition.
By this time, Kevin Hayden had replaced Rachel Rollins as Suffolk County District Attorney, and the prosecution, despite the earlier involvement of the Integrity Review Bureau, now took a more adversarial position on Pina’s new trial motion.
On February 3, 2025, Judge Krupp granted Pina a new trial, based on the new DNA evidence, the evidence about Annas and the third-party culprits, and Carroll’s failure to call an expert witness to testify about problems with eyewitness identifications.
“There was no evidence that defendant knew Robinson or had any motive to shoot Robinson,” Krupp wrote. “Undermining Annas’s credibility was crucial to the defense. The Commonwealth’s failure to disclose the fact that Annas was psychiatrically hospitalized, which likely would have led to the discovery of considerable information about her mental health history, deprived the defense of material avenues of attack on Annas’s credibility and on the reliability of her identification.”
Judge Krupp said that the third-party culprit information was compelling. He considered it to be newly discovered, as opposed to undisclosed, because he said it wasn’t clear that the prosecutor or the police officers working on the Pina case knew about the evidence linking Johnson to the Annunciation Road robbery. He noted that the state had originally acknowledged the value of this evidence.
In addition, Judge Krupp said that under current Massachusetts law, Hall would not have been able to make an in-court identification because his initial identification had been so tentative.
The state appealed. It did not contest that the evidence regarding Annas’s hospitalization and the third parties wasn’t available to Pina at his trial, but it said that Judge Krupp abused his discretion in ruling that this evidence would have been a real factor in the jury’s deliberations. The appeal asserted that Annas’s familiarity with Pina made her less likely to have made a mistaken identification.
Pina’s response included an amicus brief from the New England Innocence Project and Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute citing research that said familiar witnesses often make errors, particularly if the witness’s relationship with the other person is not as a family member or long-time acquaintance. “Familiarity rests on a spectrum, but reliability is not linear on that spectrum because increased familiarity does not necessarily equate to increased reliability,” the brief said.
On July 28, 2026, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Judge Krupp’s ruling. The opinion said the state’s case had been weak; Hall and Annas gave conflicting accounts of what happened, noting that Hall, unlike Annas, never saw the shooter get out of a car or argue with Robinson.
“We need not decide whether the treatment records are sufficient on their own to warrant a new trial,” the court wrote. “The motion judge treated this evidence as one of the ‘factors act[ing] in concert to cause a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.’” The ruling also said the new third-party culprit evidence would have been a real factor in the jury’s deliberations.
The state dismissed the case on August 13, 2026. The dismissal noted that both Hall and Annas were dead, and that the state was unable to sustain its burden of proof.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 08-28-2026
