PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Pennsylvania decide has overturned the convictions of three males imprisoned for many years within the 1997 slaying of a 70-year-old girl regardless that their DNA by no means matched that discovered on the scene, however they may stay in jail whereas a prosecutor decides whether or not to enchantment.
The Delaware County decide on Thursday ordered new trials for Derrick Chappell — who was 15 when he was arrested — and first cousins Morton Johnson and Sam Grasty.
PENNSYLVANIA MAN IN ‘SCREAM’ COSTUME SLAUGHTERED NEIGHBOR WITH CHAINSAW, KNIFE: POLICE
“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 authorized director of the nonprofit Centurion, stated Friday. The prosecutors, he stated, “just ran roughshod” over the defendants.
A PA decide overturned the convictions of three males imprisoned within the 1997 slaying of a 70-year-old girl. (FOX Information)
The three had been charged and convicted within the demise of Henrietta Nickens of Chester, who advised her daughter in her final recognized cellphone name that she was about to observe the 11 p.m. information. She was later discovered badly overwhelmed, together with her underwear eliminated, and her dwelling ransacked, with blood on the partitions and bedding.
The three defendants — all younger individuals from the neighborhood — had been convicted regardless that DNA testing on the time confirmed that semen discovered within the sufferer’s physique and on a jacket on the scene didn’t match any of them, Casteleiro stated.
He referred to as the prosecution’s varied theories of the case “preposterous.” To clarify the dearth of a DNA match, he stated, they argued that the sufferer maybe had consensual intercourse earlier than the slaying, or that the three defendants introduced a used condom to the scene, he stated. But Nickens was chronically sick and had no recognized male companions, he continued.
“They just ran this absurd story and got juries to buy it,” Casteleiro stated.
Widespread Pleas Courtroom Choose Mary Alice Brennan at a listening to Thursday threw out the convictions and set a Could 23 bail listening to to find out if county prosecutors will search a brand new trial.
District Lawyer Jack Stollsteimer plans to overview the case subsequent week earlier than making a choice, a spokesperson stated Friday.
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Calls to attorneys for Johnson and Chappell weren’t instantly returned Friday. The Pennsylvania Innocence Project additionally labored on the case.
The lads at the moment are of their 40s. All three filed professional se petitions in federal courtroom over time saying they had been wrongly convicted, however the petitions had been denied.
