Entries tagged with “Jimmy Dennis”
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Jan 19, 2018
“Innocence Deniers” and Coercive Plea Agreements Impede Death-Row Exonerations Across the U.S.
A prosecutor’s duty, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1935, “is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.” Yet prosecutors across the U.S. have refused to acknowledge the innocence of defendants who have been wrongfully convicted, obstructing release by retrying death-sentenced defendants despite exonerating evidence, or conditioning their release upon “Alford pleas,” which force defendants to choose between clearing their names or obtaining their freedom. In an article for…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,May 03, 2024
Articles of Interest: Former Pennsylvania Death Row Prisoner Jimmy Dennis Awarded Compensation After Years-Long Legal Battle
On April 25, 2024, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania jury awarded $16 million to former death row prisoner Jimmy Dennis (pictured), who was wrongfully convicted and spent 25 years in prison. Following nine days of trial, jurors determined that the city of Philadelphia owes Mr. Dennis $10 million, and the two detectives who “engaged in malicious or wanton misconduct” owe him an additional $3 million each. Mr. Dennis was sentenced to death in 1991 for a murder he maintained he could not have…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Representation
,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…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Aug 24, 2016
Pennsylvania Death Row Inmate Granted New Trial on Innocence-Related Claims; Capitally-Charged Inmate Exonerated
Two Philadelphia, Pennsylvania capital cases involving men who have long asserted their innocence reached major milestones on August 23, with one winning an appeal granting him a new trial and a jury acquitting a second in his retrial. Both cases involved allegations of serious police and prosecutorial misconduct. James Dennis (pictured), who has been on the Commonwealth’s death row for nearly 25 years, was granted a new trial by the U.S. Court of Appeals for…
Death Row
Conditions on Death Row
,Nov 20, 2019
Pennsylvania Settles Death-Row Conditions Lawsuit, Ends Mandatory Permanent Solitary Confinement
Pennsylvania has agreed to end its policy of mandatory incarceration of death-row prisoners in permanent solitary confinement. The policy change was part of a proposed settlement agreement of a federal class action lawsuit brought by a coalition of prisoners’ rights organizations on behalf of the Commonwealth’s 136 death-row prisoners, most of whom are housed in the State Correctional Institution-Greene (pictured from Google Earth…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,May 16, 2017
Two Philadelphia Detectives, Three Wrongful Capital Prosecutions
On May 13, 2017, James “Jimmy” Dennis (pictured, center, with some of his defense team) was released from prison after more than 25 years on Pennsylvania’s death row. His release marked the culmination of three unrelated wrongful capital prosecutions in Philadelphia in the early-1990s, with the common thread a pattern of misconduct by the same two Philadelphia homicide…