A man who had his first-degree murder conviction for a fatal 2018 shooting in Mattapan overturned - after he'd spent five years in prison - today filed a wrongful-conviction suit against the state.

Dewane Tse of Providence, RI, was convicted of a triple shooting that left Yashua Amado dead in a car on Deering Road in Mattapan, even though witnesses described the suspect as in his late teens or early 20s, skinny and about 6' tall, while Tse was 34, 5'9" and weighed roughly 315 lbs.

Tse was not convicted of actually pulling the trigger that led to Yashua Amado's death but on a "joint venture" theory as the alleged killer's driver - which meant a sentence of life without parole. Nobody has ever been charged with firing the gun that killed Amado.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury convicted Tse after a trial that started in November, 2021, but the Supreme Judicial Court overturned that verdict in November, 2024, concluding prosecutors did not actually make the case beyond a reasonable doubt that Tse knew what his passenger was planning before he opened fire, or even that he knew the man had a gun.

In his suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Tse said the story is even worse than that, because he wasn't anybody's driver, he just happened to be driving in the wrong place at the wrong time - video captured him at one point driving behind Amado's car - and he was wrongly singled out for involvement, even though there was no evidence the actual shooter was ever in his car.

Although he lived in Providence at the time, Tse says he made frequent visits to Mattapan, where he grew up and still had family and his girlfriend - and that he did work in the Boston area.

Even aside from the shock and pain of being in prison, possibly for life, Tse suffered other complications, his complaint states. He missed his grandmother's funeral in 2019 and his cousin's in 2021. And:

When plaintiff was arrested, his daughter was 14. Before his arrest, he had a close relationship with his daughter and supported her financially. His arrest and imprisonment caused his daughter to cut off communication with him. She did not speak to him throughout the entirety of his incarceration. It caused Plaintiff significant stress and anguish known that his relationship with his daughter was damaged and that she could no longer depend on him for financial support.

Plaintiff's daughter is now 21. One year following his exoneration, they have begun to repair their relationship, but Plaintiff can never get back the pivotal stages of her life that he missed while imprisoned.

His complaint continues that:

Plaintiff was deprived of all the basic pleasures of human experience, which all free people enjoy as a matter or right, including the freedom to live one's life as an autonomous human being. Plaintiff was ordered to sleep, eat, dress and meet all his life needs based on an arbitrarily imposed schedule.

Plaintiff was forced to rely on his imprisoners to meet his basic needs.

Among other hardships, he had difficulty getting medical care while he was in prison. Even when he received medical care, it was often substandard. When his sciatica flare up, prison officials initially dismissed his pleas to be taken to the hospital. He was only taken to the hospital after citing legal authority on the prison officials obligation to give him access to treatment.

Tse is seeking the maximum $1 million remuneration allowed by the state's wrongful-conviction law and that the state provide whatever services he needs to fully recover from his false imprisonment, including lifetime free MassHealth membership, having all of the records related to his criminal case expunged and issuing an order letting him answer "no record" in any employment applications that require him to state whether he has a criminal record or conviction. He is also seeking a lifetime state housing voucher, one that would exempt his income should he ever earn above the normal requirements for one.

The Boston Licensing Board today approved Barbara Lynch's plan to hand over the liquor license of her shuttered B&G Oysters on Tremont Street to her landlord to settle her outstanding rent bill.

Through his lawyer, Dr. Simcha Weller, who owns 550 Tremont St. - and who, in addition to owning buildings is a neurosurgeon - told the board that he does not intend to operate the space as a restaurant himself but will instead use the license as an enticement to find a chef willing to open a place there.

B&G was one of the last of Lynch's restaurants to remain open as her local culinary empire collapsed in 2023 and 2024. A flood in December, 2024 shut the restaurant.

The Boston Licensing Board today approved plans by the operator of a small chain of Mexican/Salvadoran restaurants to buy the building and liquor license of Napper Tandy's, 4195 Washington St. in Roslindale.

La Hacienda currently has locations in East Boston, Revere and Everett.  Its plans call for a 2 a.m. closing time.

La Hacienda will be Roslindale Square's third Mexican restaurant. Mi Finca, at Washington and Corinth, also serves pizza and subs, while Chilacates, right next door, concentrates on Mexican "street food."

Aline Kaplan reports on the uncovering, after a seeming eternity of renovation time, of the top of the First Baptist Church's bell tower at Commonwealth and Clarendon, featuring friezes bracketed by holy beanblowers, um, angels heralding what angels herald atop Henry Hobson Richardson's first church work.

The Boston City Council yesterday agreed to look at possible changes to the city zoning code to make it easier to build multi-family housing by easing the zoning requirements in more parts of the city - but harder for the city's two remaining strip clubs to move to new locations.

Councilor Sharon Durkan (Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway, Mission Hill, West End) said developers are sometimes reluctant to go through the process required to win approval in areas where multi-family housing is now classified as "forbidden" or "conditional" - even if those areas now include zones next to housing; her proposal would look at shifting housing to being an allowed use where it's now "conditional" and "conditional" where it's now "forbidden."

She pointed to rezoning in the Bulfinch Triangle near North Station as an example.  Last October, the Boston Zoning Commission approved changes to zoning maps downtown to make residential development easier there as well.

Separately, the council also approved studying changing the zoning in what's left of the Combat Zone to change stripping there from an "allowable" use to "conditional,"  which means that if Centerfolds on the alley known as Lagrange Street follows through on its desires to move to the far more visible Stuart Street, it would have to win Zoning Board of Appeal Approval.

City Councilor Ed Flynn (Chinatown, Downtown, South End, South Boston) said the oft ignored residents of Chinatown deserve a say in the future of their neighborhood that would come through the required zoning hearing - and abutter and neighborhood meetings before that. The October changes to downtown zoning also shrank the Combat Zone to a small area along Lagrange - where Centerfolds now sits cheek by jowl with the city's only other strip club, the Glass Slipper - and a small strip along Stuart.

Even without the change, the club would still need to hold abutter and neighborhood meetings to win permission from Boston licensing officials for its liquor and entertainment licenses. 

Council President Liz Breadon sent both proposed measures to the council's Committee on Planning, Transportation and Development.