Entries tagged with “Philadelphia, PA”
Issues
Mar 01, 2024
Death-Sentenced Philadelphia Prisoner Daniel Gwynn Exonerated After Nearly 30 Years
On February 27, 2024, Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott approved a motion from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to dismiss first-degree murder, arson, and aggravated assault charges against 54-year-old death-sentenced prisoner Daniel Gwynn. Mr. Gwynn is the 197th person exonerated after being sentenced to death since 1973, according to DPIC’s Innocence Database. “Today is mostly for us a day of tremendous relief and sadness, a guy like him, an innocent soul spent that…
Issues
Nov 14, 2023
$9.1 million wrongful conviction settlement for Pennsylvania death row exoneree Walter Ogrod
Death-row exoneree Walter Ogrod’s federal lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia and members of the Philadelphia Police Department was settled for $9.1 million on November 3, 2023. Mr. Ogrod, who was exonerated in 2020 after 23 years on death row, was initially convicted in 1996 based on a coerced confession and false testimony from jailhouse informants in a case further tainted by police and prosecutorial misconduct and inadequate legal representation at trial. In a statement confirming the…
Issues
Jan 09, 2023
Philadelphia Death-Row Survivor Christopher Williams Shot to Death at Funeral Less Than Two Years After Double Exoneration
Less than two years after being exonerated in two different cases, Philadelphia death-row exoneree Christopher Williams (pictured) has been murdered. Williams, who spent nearly three decades in prison, including 25 years on death row, for separate wrongful murder convictions, was fatally shot after attending the funeral of Tyree Little, another formerly incarcerated man, in North Philadelphia on December 16, 2022. Philadelphia prosecutors framed Williams for six murders and subjected him to…
Issues
Aug 26, 2022
DPIC Analysis: At Least a Dozen Exonerations in 2021 Involved the Wrongful Threat or Pursuit of the Death Penalty
A Death Penalty Information Center review of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has found that the pursuit or threatened use of the death penalty by police or prosecutors in nine different states led to the wrongful murder convictions of at least twelve innocent people who were exonerated in 2021. DPIC’s analysis of the National Registry’s 2021 Annual Report on Exonerations found that prosecutors in California, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, and New York wrongfully sought the…
Issues
Aug 16, 2021
NBC’s ‘Dateline’ Investigates the Wrongful Capital Conviction of Death-Row Exoneree Walter Ogrod
NBC’s true crime series, Dateline, featured an episode on August 13, 2021 on the wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration of former Philadelphia death-row prisoner Walter Ogrod (pictured). The episode, entitled “The Investigation,” is part of an NBC News series called “Justice for All” that reports on wrongful convictions and the U.S. criminal legal system. For the report, NBC News anchor Lester Holt interviewed Ogrod, the mother and stepfather of 4‑year-old victim Barbara Jean Horn…
Issues
Aug 06, 2021
DPIC Analysis: 13 Exonerated in 2020 From Convictions Obtained by Wrongful Threat or Pursuit of the Death Penalty
A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has found that law enforcement use or threat of capital prosecution against suspects or witnesses contributed to the wrongful convictions of 10% of the people exonerated in the United States and more than one-fifth of all murder exonerations in 2020. Reviewing data from the National Registry of Exonerations’ 2020 Annual Report, DPIC found that the death penalty was pursued or defendants or witnesses…
Issues
Jul 15, 2021
Hidden Costs: Liability Judgments for Wrongful Capital Prosecutions Cost Taxpayers in Death-Penalty States Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
Studies have consistently found that a system of criminal law in which the death penalty is available as a punishment is far more expensive than a system in which the most severe punishment is life without parole or a long prison term. Now, as the number of murder exonerations mounts across the United States, a previously hidden cost is emerging: the cost of liability for police and prosecutorial misconduct associated with the wrongful use or threatened use of the death penalty. The innocence…
Issues
Jul 07, 2021
NEW BOOK — Marc Bookman’s A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays
“The more people know about how the system of capital punishment really works, the less support they will have for that policy,” says Marc Bookman, the author of A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays. Bookman’s critically acclaimed collection of essays — described by Publishers Weekly as “a cogent and harrowing primer on what’s wrong with capital punishment” — channels his decades of capital litigation experience into 12 stories that exemplify the systemic failings of the…
Research
May 20, 2021
In Election Seen as Referendum on Reform Prosecutors, Larry Krasner Renominated for Second Term as Philadelphia District Attorney
In a primary election widely considered a referendum on reform prosecutors, incumbent Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner easily secured a victory against former Philadelphia homicide prosecutor Carlos Vega. Krasner won the May 18, 2021 election on a platform of continuing the reform he began four years ago when he was first elected: eschewing use of the death penalty, initiating systemic criminal justice reforms, and ending mass incarceration. Krasner’s Democratic primary win all but…
Issues
Jan 27, 2021
Philadelphia Boxer Sent to Death Row by Unrebutted False Medical Testimony Released After 28 Years
Former lightweight and junior welterweight boxing contender Anthony Fletcher (pictured) has been released from prison, 28 years after he was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder and sent to Pennsylvania’s death row by false medical testimony. In a virtual hearing in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas on January 21, 2021, Fletcher entered a plea of no contest to charges of third-degree murder, and Judge Lillian Ransom resentenced him to 12½ – 25 years. Because he had already served…
Issues
Jul 06, 2020
Kareem Johnson Becomes Nation’s 170th Death-Row Exoneree Since 1973
Former Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Kareem Johnson has been exonerated, thirteen years after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death by a Philadelphia jury. On July 1, 2020, the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas completed his exoneration, formally entering an order dismissing all charges against him in his capital case. On May 19, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had barred his reprosecution because of prosecutorial misconduct that exhibited a conscious and reckless disregard for…
Issues
Jun 09, 2020
Walter Ogrod Exonerated After 23 Years on Pennsylvania’s Death Row
Twenty-eight years after Philadelphia prosecutors first sought to take his life for the murder of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, Walter Ogrod (pictured, second from right, with members of his defense team) has been exonerated from Pennsylvania’s death row. In a dramatic virtual hearing on June 5, 2020 that was attended by Ogrod, his family, Barbara Jean’s mother, counsel, and the media, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Shelley Robins New granted a joint motion by prosecutors and…
Issues
Executions Overview
,Jun 06, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of June 1, 2020
NEWS (6/5/20) — North Carolina: The North Carolina Supreme Court has struck down the state legislature’s attempted retroactive repeal of the state’s Racial Justice Act, restoring the rights of approximately 130 death-row prisoners to seek redress of death sentences that they had claimed were substantially affected by racial bias. The Court issued its 6 – 1 rulings in the cases of death-row prisoners Andrew Ramseur (pictured, left) and Rayford Burke (pictured, right), holding that “the…
Issues
Jan 23, 2020
A ‘Perfect Storm’ of Injustice — Death-Row Prisoner Christopher Williams Exonerated in Philadelphia Murder Case
In a case prosecutors now describe as a “perfect storm” of injustice, Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Christopher Williams (pictured) and his co-defendant Theophalis Wilson have been exonerated of a 1989 triple murder in North Philadelphia. On December 23, 2019, conceding that later-fired prosecutors had withheld “a plethora of significant material, exculpatory evidence,” the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against Williams. Less than a month later, on January 21…
Issues
New Voices
,Jul 18, 2019
Philadelphia District Attorney Asks Pennsylvania Supreme Court to Strike Down State’s Death Penalty
Citing race disparities, ineffective representation by court-appointed lawyers, and arbitrary case outcomes, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike down the state’s death penalty. In a brief filed on July 15, 2019 in the consolidated appeals of Philadelphia death-row prisoner Jermont Cox and Northumberland County’s Kevin Marinelli, the District Attorney’s office argued that Pennsylvania’s death penalty “has repeatedly been handed out in an…
Issues
Nov 16, 2018
DPIC Analysis: The Decline of the Death Penalty in Philadelphia
During his election campaign, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner described the economic wastefulness of city prosecutors’ pursuit of the death penalty as “lighting money on fire.” A DPIC analysis of the outcomes of the more than 200 death sentences imposed in the city since 1978 (click here to enlarge image) and the last seven years of capital prosecution outcomes provides strong support for Krasner’s claim. Data tracking the final dispositions of cases in which Pennsylvania…
Issues
May 01, 2017
BOOKS: “The Trials of Walter Ogrod” Chronicles Pennsylvania Possible Innocence Case
Walter Ogrod was convicted and sentenced to death in Philadelphia in 1996 for the 1988 murder of a 4‑year-old girl, whose body was found in a discarded television box. Ogrod, who is developmentally disabled, has long maintained his innocence, but despite significant irregularities in the case and amidst allegations of official misconduct, local prosecutors have fought efforts to obtain DNA testing of the physical evidence and to investigate the role a discredited prison informant played in…
Issues
Dec 29, 2016
First-Degree Murder Charges Dropped Against Two Former Pennsylvania Death Row Prisoners With Innocence Claims
On December 22, 2016, Pennsylvania prosecutors dropped first-degree murder charges against two former Pennsylvania death row prisoners who have asserted their innocence for decades. In courtrooms 100 miles apart, Tyrone Moore and James Dennis entered no-contest pleas to charges of third-degree murder, avoiding retrials on the charges that had initially sent the men to death row and paving the way for their release. A Luzerne County judge sentenced Moore to 20 years and released him from prison…
Issues
Nov 18, 2005
122nd Inmate Freed From Death Row
Harold Wilson is the 6th Person Exonerated in Pennsylvania More than 16 years after a Pennsylvania jury returned three death sentences against Harold Wilson, new DNA evidence has led to his acquittal. During Wilson’s 1989 capital trial, the prosecution used racially discriminatory practices in selecting the jury. In 1999, Wilson’s death sentence was overturned when a court determined that his defense counsel had failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence during his original trial.