‘THEY WERE INNOCENT’

Murder Convictions of 3 Pennsylvania Men Overturned After Nearly 25 Years in Prison

The trio were found guilty of the brutal 1997 slaying of an elderly woman despite what their lawyers cite as a total lack of evidence.

A Pennsylvania judge this week vacated the convictions of three men who have spent more than two decades behind bars for a grisly murder they say they did not commit. In 1997, Derrick Chappell, Samuel Grasty, and Morton Johnson were accused of killing Henrietta Nickens, a 70-year-old woman who was found beaten and sexually assaulted in her apartment. The trio, all of whom are Black, were in their teens and early 20s when they were arrested, and have long maintained their innocence. Their lawyers petitioned to have their convictions thrown out last year, arguing that new DNA evidence strongly suggests that a single unknown perpetrator was behind Nickens’ death. On Thursday, a Delaware County judge agreed to overturn their convictions and ordered new trials for them. “This case never should have been prosecuted. These guys never should have been charged,” Paul Casteleiro, Grasty’s lawyer and legal director of Centurion, a nonprofit helping to represent the men alongside the national Innocence Project and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, told the Associated Press. Chappell, Grasty, and Johnson, now in their 40s, remain imprisoned. Prosecutors have up to 30 days to decide whether to appeal the judge’s ruling, and a bail hearing is set for late May, according to CNN.