3 Pennsylvania men convicted in 1997 killing have convictions overturned after decades in prison
A Pennsylvania judge has overturned the convictions of three men imprisoned for decades in the 1997 slaying of a 70-year-old woman even though their DNA never matched that found at the scene, but they will remain in prison while a prosecutor decides whether to appeal.
A Pennsylvania judge has overturned the convictions of three men imprisoned for decades in the 1997 slaying of a 70-year-old woman even though their DNA never matched that found at the scene, but they will remain in prison while a prosecutor decides whether to appeal.
The Delaware County judge on Thursday ordered new trials for Derrick Chappell — who was 15 when he was arrested — and first cousins Morton Johnson and Sam Grasty.
“This case never should have been prosecuted. These guys never should have been charged. The evidence always was that they were innocent,” Paul Casteleiro, Grasty’s lawyer and legal director of the nonprofit Centurion, said Friday. The prosecutors, he said, “just ran roughshod” over the defendants.
The three were charged and convicted in the death of Henrietta Nickens of Chester, who told her daughter in her last known phone call that she was about to watch the 11 p.m. news. She was later found badly beaten, with her underwear removed, and her home ransacked, with blood on the walls and bedding.
The three defendants — all young people from the neighborhood — were convicted even though DNA testing at the time showed that semen found in the victim’s body and on a jacket at the scene did not match any of them, Casteleiro said.
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