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 detectives. 

Dennis, Anthony Wright, and Percy St. George were all cap­i­tal­ly charged for mur­der in cas­es inves­ti­gat­ed by Detectives Manuel Santiago and Frank Jastrzembski. Dennis was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death, Wright was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to life with­out parole when his death penal­ty jury could not agree on a sen­tence, and cap­i­tal charges against St. George were dis­missed before he went to tri­al. Misconduct in Wright and Dennis’ tri­als led courts to over­turn their con­vic­tions decades later. 

The detec­tives’ mis­con­duct came to light in the St. George case when one sup­posed eye­wit­ness told St. George’s attor­neys that he had iden­ti­fied St. George only because “[Santiago] told me that I could get locked up, so I was scared, because I had nev­er been locked up before.” As oth­er ques­tion­able con­duct was dis­cov­ered, Detectives Santiago and Jastrzembski invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrim­i­na­tion and the charges against St. George were dropped. 

Wright was ini­tial­ly con­vict­ed of rape and mur­der based upon an unrecord­ed fab­ri­cat­ed con­fes­sion that Santiago pur­port­ed to have tak­en and cloth­ing match­ing those Wright sup­pos­ed­ly had admit­ted to have worn dur­ing the crime. Jastrembski claimed to have found those clothes hid­den under Wright’s bed. DNA test­ing lat­er estab­lished that the clothes had actu­al­ly been worn by the vic­tim, not Wright, sug­gest­ing that police had fab­ri­cat­ed the con­fes­sion and plant­ed the cloth­ing to incriminate Wright. 

Jastrembski and Santiago were also impli­cat­ed in mis­con­duct in Dennis’ case, sup­press­ing evi­dence that Dennis was not the killer. The two detec­tives had been asked to fol­low up on a state­ment a coun­ty pris­on­er named William Frazier had giv­en to police say­ing that a friend of his had con­fessed to com­mit­ting the mur­der with two oth­er men. The detec­tives spoke to one of the three poten­tial sus­pects, who fit the descrip­tion offered by anoth­er eye­wit­ness, but con­tra­dict­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s case against Dennis. That infor­ma­tion was with­held from Dennis’ defense. Jastrembski also claimed to have seized clothes from Dennis’ house that fit the descrip­tion of the clothes eye­wit­ness­es said the killer had worn, but told the state post-con­vic­tion court that the clothes had since been thrown in the trash by cleaners. 

Even after courts over­turned Wright’s and Dennis’ con­vic­tions, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office con­tin­ued to pur­sue charges against them. Even after Wright was acquit­ted in August 2016, a pros­e­cu­tion spokesper­son con­tin­ued to assert that ​“the evi­dence was suf­fi­cient to prove Anthony Wright par­tic­i­pat­ed in the mur­der of Louise Talley.” In December 2016, fac­ing a cap­i­tal retri­al, Dennis made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to plead no con­test to less­er charges. He was resen­tenced to time served, but his release was delayed as he await­ed parole on unrelated charges. 

The Innocence Project and a Philadelphia civ­il rights law firm have filed a law­suit against the city and 11 police offi­cers, includ­ing Detectives Santiago and Jastrzembski, alleg­ing a per­va­sive pat­tern of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al mis­con­duct, includ­ing in the cas­es of Wright, Dennis, and St. George.