By Maryclaire Dale -
The Associated Press
A Pennsylvania judge overturned the convictions of three men who were imprisoned for decades for the 1997 murder of a 70-year-old woman, even though their DNA never matched samples found at the crime 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 Morton Johnson and Sam Grasty, who are first cousins.
“
This case should never have been prosecuted
.” These guys should never have been charged. The evidence always showed that they were innocent,” Paul Casteleiro, Grasty's lawyer and legal director of the nonprofit Centurion, said Friday. Prosecutors, he said, “were cruel” to the defendants.
The Delaware County courthouse in Media, Pa., on Oct. 14, 2020.Matt Slocum / AP file
All three were charged and convicted in the death of Henrietta Nickens of Chester, who in her last phone call, as far as is known, told her daughter she was going to watch the 11:00 pm news. She was later found badly beaten, without underwear, and her house ransacked, with blood on the walls and bedding.
The three defendants – all young people from the neighborhood – were convicted despite the fact that DNA tests carried out at the time showed that the semen found on the victim's body and on a jacket at the scene did not match any of them. , stated Casteleiro.
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The lawyer described
the various theories of the prosecution
about the case as “absurd. ”
To explain the lack of a DNA match, he said, they argued that the victim may have had consensual sex before the murder, or that the three defendants brought a used condom to the scene, he said. However, Nickens was chronically ill and had no known male partners, he continued.
“They just presented this absurd story and got the juries to swallow it,” Casteleiro stressed.
At a hearing Thursday, Judge Mary Alice Brennan vacated the convictions and set a hearing for May 23 to determine whether county prosecutors wanted a new trial.
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District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer plans to review the case next week before making a decision, a spokesman said Friday.
Calls to attorneys for Johnson and Chappell were not immediately returned Friday. The Pennsylvania Innocence Project also worked on the case.
The men are now over 40 years old
. All three filed
pro se
petitions (petition filed by a person representing themselves in court, without the assistance of an attorney) in federal court over the years, in which they argued that they had been wrongfully convicted, but they were denied.