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 defense coun­sel to over­turn his wrong­ful con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Robins New denied Philadelphia pros­e­cu­tors’ motion to dis­miss the charges against Ogrod say­ing she lacked juris­dic­tion to do so, but agreed to reduce the charges to third-degree mur­der, allow­ing Ogrod to be released on bail.

Members of the defense team drove Ogrod out of the State Correctional Institution – Phoenix that after­noon, end­ing 23 years of wrong­ful con­fine­ment on death row. Ogrod met the media out­side a local con­ve­nience store, where he declined to speak about him­self but offered con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of George Floyd and expressed con­cern for oth­er still incar­cer­at­ed Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­ers whom he said were innocent.

Philadelphia courts were closed except for emer­gency mat­ters because of ongo­ing protests against police vio­lence, but Robins New said she would seek an expe­dit­ed hear­ing in front of the homi­cide court cal­en­dar judge to rule on the prosecution’s motion to dis­miss the charges against Ogrod. On June 10, 2020, Judge Leon Tucker grant­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s motion to dis­miss the charges, com­plet­ing Ogrod’s exoneration.

The hear­ing was held three months after the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office filed a brief­ing call­ing Ogrod ​“like­ly inno­cent” and sup­port­ing the rever­sal of his con­vic­tion. During those months, Ogrod became ill with symp­toms of COVID-19, though the cor­rec­tions depart­ment refused to con­firm whether he was among the pris­on­ers at SCI-Phoenix who test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus. While he was ill, Robins New denied a motion to con­duct an expe­dit­ed hear­ing on his post-con­vic­tion chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections defied an order by anoth­er judge, lat­er with­drawn, to trans­port Ogrod to an inde­pen­dent hos­pi­tal to obtain medical care. 

Ogrod has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence in the 1988 mur­der of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn. His first tri­al end­ed in a mis­tri­al when one of the 12 jurors who had vot­ed to acquit changed his mind. Before his sec­ond tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors engaged the assis­tance of John Hall, a noto­ri­ous jail­house infor­mant whom they nick­named ​“the Monsignor,” who worked with anoth­er infor­mant to fab­ri­cate a con­fes­sion from Ogrod. That tes­ti­mo­ny, along with a false con­fes­sion elicit­ed after 14 hours of inter­ro­ga­tion by homi­cide detec­tives who had coerced false con­fes­sions in sev­er­al oth­er cas­es, sent Ogrod to death row.

Ogrod’s case first attract­ed wide­spread atten­tion from a 2004 inves­tiga­tive series by reporter Tom Lowenstein, who lat­er wrote a book, The Trials of Walter Ogrod, about the case. It lat­er became the sub­ject of an episode of the CNN tele­vi­sion series, Death Row Stories.

Ogrod’s exon­er­a­tion efforts gained new momen­tum with the sup­port of both the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office and Sharon Fahy, the moth­er of the mur­der vic­tim. A review of Ogrod’s case by the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) con­clud­ed that the evi­dence used to send Ogrod to death row had been ​“false, unre­li­able and incom­plete.” His con­vic­tion, CIU Chief Patricia Cummings said, was a ​“gross mis­car­riage of jus­tice,” marred by police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct — includ­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of junk sci­ence and false infor­mant tes­ti­mo­ny, and with­hold­ing excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence con­cern­ing the cause of the young girl’s death. In April 2020, Fahy sub­mit­ted an affi­davit sup­port­ing Ogrod’s release. She said, ​“I am sad and angry to find out 32 years lat­er that key evi­dence was with­held from me, my fam­i­ly and the courts. My daugh­ter is nev­er com­ing home but I want­ed jus­tice for her, not sim­ply a closed case with an inno­cent per­son in jail.”

At the June 5 hear­ing, Assistant District Attorney Carrie Wood offered an emo­tion­al apol­o­gy for the mis­han­dling of the case. ​“First, I must turn to Mr. Ogrod and his fam­i­ly and friends,” Wood said. ​“I am sor­ry it took 28 years for us to lis­ten to what Barbara Jean was try­ing to tell us.… That you are inno­cent. That the words on that state­ment came from detec­tives and not you. And that we not only stole 28 years of your life, but that we threat­ened to exe­cute you based on falsehoods.” 

She then addressed Fahy, say­ing, ​“This office has not told you the truth about what hap­pened to your lit­tle girl so many years ago. The truth is painful, and ter­ri­ble, but it is what you deserved to hear from this office. And we did not do that. And I am so sor­ry. One of the most dif­fi­cult things for me is not being able to tell you who did this to Barbara Jean. I can’t imag­ine the pain of think­ing a chap­ter of your life has been closed only for it to reopen with unanswered questions.” 

Finally, Wood apol­o­gized to the peo­ple of Philadelphia. ​“The errors made in this case made the streets less safe and I fear that the true per­pe­tra­tor in this case, hav­ing been left on the streets, may have brought harm to oth­ers,” she said. ​“That is the impact of … wrong­ful con­vic­tions on our com­mu­ni­ty. And for that, this office must apol­o­gize. And we must do better.”

District Attorney Larry Krasner spoke at a news con­fer­ence on the case, call­ing it ​“hard to cel­e­brate” because it has caused so much pain. ​“These kinds of events, in which the sys­tem cor­rects itself, are absolute­ly essen­tial to the restora­tion of trust between the com­mu­ni­ty and law enforce­ment,” Krasner said. 

James Rollins, an attor­ney for Ogrod, echoed those sen­ti­ments in a state­ment. ​“Today Mr. Ogrod has been giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to put his unfair tri­al and har­row­ing incar­cer­a­tion behind him and begin to cre­ate a new, bet­ter life. It is a pro­found moment, filled with hap­pi­ness and hope. Not only for Mr. Ogrod, but also for oth­er inno­cent, wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed indi­vid­u­als. There is hope that the sys­tem will learn from Mr. Ogrod’s case and there is hope that Barbara Jean Horn’s real killer will be brought to justice.”

Ogrod will like­ly become the 169^th per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row in the United State since 1973. Another Philadelphia exon­er­a­tion is also pend­ing — that of Kareem Johnson. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court assured that Johnson will be exon­er­at­ed from Pennsylvania’s death row when it ruled on May 19 that his repros­e­cu­tion would vio­late the state’s dou­ble jeop­ardy pro­tec­tions. The court returned the case to the Pennsylvania Superior Court with direc­tions to enter an order grant­i­ng Johnson’s motion to bar retri­al. A third Philadelphia death-row pris­on­er, Christopher Williams, was exon­er­at­ed in December 2019.

The exon­er­a­tions of Ogrod and Johnson will bring the total num­ber of Pennsylvania death-row exon­er­a­tions to nine, six of them from Philadelphia.