‘Justice Under God’
In his recently republished book, Justice Under God: How Faith, Hope, and Charity Freed an Innocent Man and Helped Save a Thousand Lives, Boston College Law School Adjunct Professor Christopher J. Muse, a retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge, chronicles his and his father Robert’s intervention in the life of murder suspect Bobby Joe Leaster.
Leaster served nearly 16 years in a Massachusetts prison for a 1970 murder and armed robbery in Dorchester he didn’t commit. The Muses, working pro bono, started in 1977 to right the wrong; Leaster was freed in the winter of 1986.
“I could feel that the man upstairs answered my prayers by sending the Muses to me,” said Leaster, who died in 2020, at the time of his release. “I could feel it in my heart.”
Originally self-published by Muse in 2021, Justice Under God has now been reprinted through Combray House. The book describes the crucial impact of the Leaster case in thwarting the reinstitution of capital punishment in Massachusetts during the 1990s, and unlocking compensation opportunities for persons who were unjustly incarcerated. More importantly, said Muse, the book reveals “the most extraordinary human being I’ve ever met in my life,” and a man he considers as dear to him as any of his seven brothers.
The Muse family—several of whose members are BC or BC Law alumni—will donate all 2025 royalties from Justice Under God to the New England Innocence Project, which aims to remedy injustices such as those endured by Leaster, according to Muse’s niece, Julie Muse-Fisher J.D. ’05; in addition, the family has made a $40,000 gift to the BC Law Innocence Project, which pursues a similar mission.
A native of Reform, Ala., and a talented athlete, Leaster declined a college basketball scholarship and chose to head north to Boston to fulfill his dream of a Jim Crow-less life, despite the city’s troubled racial history. But at age 20, his life changed dramatically when he was arrested for the murder of variety store owner Levi Whiteside, who was killed by two men during a hold-up on September 27, 1970.
Although he had been miles away at his girlfriend’s house at the time of the shooting, Leaster was wearing clothes similar to the perpetrator at the time of his arrest. Whiteside’s wife Kathleen, who had witnessed the shooting, initially identified Leaster as the killer but subsequently stated that she was unsure as to whether he had committed the murder. Despite weak evidence, Leaster was charged, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Leaster filed two unsuccessful appeals; in neither instance did the court-appointed attorney meet him in person. When Muse was appointed to represent Leaster in his third challenge, he heeded his father’s advice: “I don’t want you to just look at his file: Go talk to him,” said Robert, a 1942 BC alumnus.
Muse found Leaster to be “convincingly sweet, gentle, kind, and…innocent,” he told Lawyers Weekly.
Christopher J. Muse
An inconclusive test for gunpowder residue, previously unexamined grand jury testimony, and crucially, questioning Leaster while he was under hypnosis all were key facets to developing a more likely theory of the crime. While Muse aggressively shepherded an all-star roster of legal luminaries to support Leaster’s case, a young man who witnessed the murder came forward in the summer of 1986 and credibly testified that Leaster was not the killer. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office announced that Leaster would not be retried, and he was released.
In 1992, the state legislature approved a state-funded annuity that paid Leaster $1 million over the next 25 years to compensate him for the wrongful imprisonment.
For the next 30 years, Leaster worked the streets of Boston, steering disadvantaged and at-risk kids away from gangs and toward school or jobs. As Leaster approached his 70th birthday, he and Muse discussed writing a book, and the lawyer began the foundational research, but Leaster’s death from burns sustained in a fire at his apartment put an end to the collaboration.
“Bobby Joe had every right to be bitter, angry, rage at the people and the system that railroaded him,” Muse told The Boston Globe in an interview a week after Leaster died. “Instead, he forgave everybody who had wronged him and decided he would do everything in his power to make sure other kids didn’t end up in prison.”
Triggered by a scholarship fundraising request from the alumni association at Leaster’s high school and motivated by interviews with people who knew him before he came to Boston, Muse re-started the book with rekindled enthusiasm, using the task as therapy to overcome his loss.
“Bobby Joe became a member of our family,” said Muse, who noted that the book was written out of a sense of familial obligation—not just to his father, but to Leaster.
Leaster’s influence crossed generations. Muse’s niece, Rita, a 2015 BC Law graduate now working for the Suffolk County District Attorney, shared with BC Law Magazine her remembrance of Leaster, whom she characterized as the person “who motivated me as a student, inspired me as a lawyer, and became a friend of my family.” He also served as a visiting lecturer at BC Law, and played the role of defendant in mock trials as part of Christopher Muse’s Trial Practice classes, she noted, “successfully providing a window into the human suffering that law can cause and that dedicated lawyers can sometimes help alleviate.
“Bobby Joe’s true gift—whether he was [speaking to] law students, gang-affiliated youth, probation officers, his fellow street workers, the legislature, judges or his lawyers—was that he inspired greatness,” said Rita. “I can say for certain that his life inspired my dream of becoming a lawyer and practicing criminal law.”