Law360 (July 28, 2026, 7:15 PM EDT) -- Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that a decades-old murder conviction based on eyewitness testimony cannot stand, citing new DNA evidence and other information that called into question the reliability of a key witness.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld a lower court's order for a new trial for a 1993 shooting, in which a man was killed while selling drugs in Boston. The defendant, Stephen Pina, was convicted without physical or video evidence; the state's case relied heavily on two eyewitnesses who identified him in a photo lineup.

It was not until recently that Pina's defense team learned that one of the witnesses, who had admitted to being high on crack cocaine when police showed her a photo array, had also been in and out of several psychiatric hospitals, the high court said in its opinion. She had testified at Pina's trial that she was "incarcerated" at the time, when she was, in fact, receiving psychiatric care at a hospital.

Newly discovered police records also suggested a potential other suspect related to a carjacking that had occurred nearby on the night of the shooting, the justices found.

And adding to that, postconviction DNA testing of the victim's jacket, which the killer had grabbed during a confrontation, excluded Pina as a major contributor.

Pina was indicted in October 1993. His first jury trial in 1995 resulted in a mistrial. In a second jury trial in January 1996, he was convicted of first-degree murder and other charges and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In 2020, Pina filed a motion for a new trial, leading to a four-day evidentiary hearing in 2022. The motion was granted in 2025, and the state appealed.

On Tuesday, Justice Frank Gaziano wrote in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's opinion that the lower court judge did not abuse his discretion in allowing a retrial because he considered all the evidence to reach the conclusion that justice may not have been done in the case, without relying entirely on one piece of it. As for the importance of the eyewitness, the opinion cited the lower court, which said it was "not a situation where there was a mountain of other evidence available to convict" Pina.

"Here, there is no question that the commonwealth's case depended heavily on [the witness'] testimony," according to the high court's opinion.

The state is represented by Ian Maclean of the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.

Pina is represented by Jill Tessier and Lisa Kavanaugh.

The case is Commonwealth v. Pina, case number SJC-13783, in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

--Editing by Covey Son.

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