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Cops whose false testimony sent Black man to prison for 25 years are slapped with criminal charges
This Friday, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced that charges have been filed against three former homicide detectives whose false statements contributed to the 25-year imprisonment of an innocent man over a rape and murder charges, HuffPost reports.
Manuel Santiago, Martin Devlin and Frank Jastrzembski helped with the 1993 conviction of Anthony Wright, who has since been exonerated by DNA evidence. In a retrial decades later, the trio repeated their false claims.
“After hearing testimony from key witnesses and reviewing evidence, the Grand Jury recommended that Santiago, Devlin, and Jastrzembski be held accountable for lying under oath to condemn an innocent man and cover up their wrongdoing, and for perverting the integrity of law,” Krasner said Friday.
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Wright was convicted in 1993 based on his coerced confession and the clothes that Jastrzembski falsely claimed he found. But in 2014, The Innocence Project eventually got Wright’s conviction overturned using DNA evidence, which linked a man named Robert Byrd to the crime. Byrd was no longer alive when the new evidence was uncovered. But despite Wright’s clear innocence, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office decided to try Wright again in 2016, where Santiago, Devlin, and Jastrzembski “testified falsely under oath about both the evidence used to convict Wright and their knowledge of the DNA evidence that ultimately exonerated him,” according to the grand jury presentment.
Manuel Santiago, Martin Devlin and Frank Jastrzembski helped with the 1993 conviction of Anthony Wright, who has since been exonerated by DNA evidence. In a retrial decades later, the trio repeated their false claims.
“After hearing testimony from key witnesses and reviewing evidence, the Grand Jury recommended that Santiago, Devlin, and Jastrzembski be held accountable for lying under oath to condemn an innocent man and cover up their wrongdoing, and for perverting the integrity of law,” Krasner said Friday.
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Wright was convicted in 1993 based on his coerced confession and the clothes that Jastrzembski falsely claimed he found. But in 2014, The Innocence Project eventually got Wright’s conviction overturned using DNA evidence, which linked a man named Robert Byrd to the crime. Byrd was no longer alive when the new evidence was uncovered. But despite Wright’s clear innocence, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office decided to try Wright again in 2016, where Santiago, Devlin, and Jastrzembski “testified falsely under oath about both the evidence used to convict Wright and their knowledge of the DNA evidence that ultimately exonerated him,” according to the grand jury presentment.
[link:https://deadstate.org/cops-whose-false-testimony-sent-black-man-to-prison-for-25-years-are-slapped-with-criminal-charges/|]
Emphasis mine
I know justice cannot be about retribution and revenge, but if it where they should be sentenced to the exact number of days Mr Wright was forced to endure in the prison system based on their rank corruption and lack of any decency - doubling down on their lines at the second trial? Knowing that this could lead to them once again seeing the same innocent man convicted yet again in a crime he did not commit. It is good that there are some repercussions for this behaviour in play here. We need to see more of this.
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