Active in the Knights of Columbus, he served as a State Deputy of Massachusetts in the fraternal organization.

They stated strong disagreement with the prosecutor's theory, ruled on questions of interpretation, and formally acquitted Edelin, exonerating him.

[1] He beat Byrne and three others in the Democratic primary on September 19, 1978, and faced no opposition in the general election.

But the family of Charles Stuart, the white man who was Carol's husband, confessed that he had fabricated the story of a Black carjacker as a racist hoax to deflect the investigators' attention from his own role in the crime.

[4] In 2019, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins formally apologized for Flanagan's role in "traumatizing, humiliating and assaulting black men of every age" in the Mission Hill neighborhood during the 1989 manhunt for Stuart's killer.

[5] Flanagan joined the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, while at Boston College.