Nearly three decades after a North Philadelphia murder sent three men to prison for life, a judge has tossed their convictions and set them free. District Attorney Larry Krasner's office on Tuesday announced the exonerations of Mark Brittingham, Jermel Shuler, and Rasheed Turner, who were "robbed of a fair trial" when convicted in 1998 of killing 73-year-old Essie Thomas a year earlier, per the Philadelphia Inquirer and WPVI. Krasner said the case unraveled after his Conviction Integrity Unit brought in a forensic expert who disputed the original medical examiner's estimate of Thomas' time of death—an estimate that had helped prop up the sole eyewitness account.
The witness never claimed to have seen the stabbing, only three men leaving Thomas' home, and she admitted she was high at the time. Krasner said she lied and appeared to receive improved housing in exchange for her false testimony, which the medical examiner covered for with "a time of death that was way off," per WHYY. At trial, assistant medical examiner Bennett Preston told jurors that Thomas likely died on Nov. 8, the same day the witness reported seeing the three men on her porch, but a review by two forensic pathologists concluded Thomas died at least a day later, the Inquirer reports.
Judge Jennifer Schultz cited previous disciplinary actions against the medical examiner, who has since left the city and now works in Delaware County. Krasner suggested Delaware County might now want to review his work. His office has no plans to retry the nearly 30-year-old case, citing a lack of sufficient evidence. The three men were never linked to the crime through DNA and all maintained their innocence, according to a joint statement from groups including the Innocence Project. Released from a Pennsylvania prison on Tuesday, Turner told WPVI that the case was "sloppy from the beginning," but still, "I missed out on seeing my family grow up" because of "something I didn't do."
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