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A Pennsylvania judge has dismissed the murder convictions of three men who have spent decades in prison even though DNA at the crime scene did not match any of them. The judge gave prosecutors until May 23 to decide whether to retry the men. NBC NEWS
A Pennsylvania judge has overturned the convictions of three men imprisoned for decades in the 1997 slaying of a 70-year-old woman even though their DNA never matched that found at the scene, but they will remain in prison while a prosecutor decides whether to appeal.
The Delaware County judge on Thursday ordered new trials for Derrick Chappell — who was 15 when he was arrested — and first cousins Morton Johnson and Sam Grasty.
“This case never should have been prosecuted. These guys never should have been charged. The evidence always was that they were innocent,” Paul Casteleiro, Grasty’s lawyer and legal director of the nonprofit Centurion, said Friday. The prosecutors, he said, “just ran roughshod” over the defendants.
The three were charged and convicted in the death of Henrietta Nickens of Chester, who told her daughter in her last known phone call that she was about to watch the 11 p.m. news. She was later found badly beaten, with her underwear removed, and her home ransacked, with blood on the walls and bedding.
The three defendants — all young people from the neighborhood — were convicted even though DNA testing at the time showed that semen found in the victim’s body and on a jacket at the scene did not match any of them, Casteleiro said.
He called the prosecution’s various theories of the case “preposterous.” To explain the lack of a DNA match, he said, they argued that the victim perhaps had consensual sex before the slaying, or that the three defendants brought a used condom to the scene, he said. Yet Nickens was chronically ill and had no known male partners, he continued.
“They just ran this absurd story and got juries to buy it,” Casteleiro said.
Common Pleas Court Judge Mary Alice Brennan at a hearing Thursday threw out the convictions and set a May 23 bail hearing to determine if county prosecutors will seek a new trial.
District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer plans to review the case next week before making a decision, a spokesperson said Friday.
Calls to lawyers for Johnson and Chappell were not immediately returned Friday. The Pennsylvania Innocence Project also worked on the case.
The men are now in their 40s. All three filed pro se petitions in federal court over the years saying they were wrongly convicted, but the petitions were denied."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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MORE VALUABLE WORDS: "As a former public defender, Texas' refusal to delay Ivan Cantu's execution to evaluate new evidence is deeply worrying for the state of our legal system. There should be no room for doubt in a death penalty case. The facts surrounding Cantu's execution should haunt all of us."
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett; X March 1, 2024.
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