A Pennsylvania judge overturned the convictions of three Black men who have served more than two decades in prison for the 1997 murder of an elderly woman as newly uncovered DNA evidence pointed to an unknown assailant and their potential innocence.
Derrick Chappell, 41, Morton Johnson, 44, and Samuel Grasty, 47, remain locked up despite the March 31 ruling by Delaware County Judge Mary Alice Brennan, who granted their motion for a new trial but stopped short of setting them free.
Known as the “Chester Trio,” the group of men was sentenced to life in prison after they were found guilty in separate trials in 2000 and 2001 for the 1997 killing of 70-year-old Henrietta Nickens in Chester, Pennsylvania.
Prosecutors have a month to decide whether to appeal the judge’s ruling, while a bail hearing is scheduled for May 23, which could potentially set the convicted trio free after nearly 25 years.
The men have always maintained their innocence despite their convictions on second-degree murder charges and other crimes.
Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said his office was reviewing what action to take following the judge’s ruling, while law enforcement officials planned to sit down in the coming days to discuss whether to appeal or bring the case again.
Last year, with assistance from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, the defendants filed a motion to overturn their convictions based on new biological testing conducted in 2021, which suggested an unknown perpetrator was responsible for Nickens’ death.
In vacating the convictions, the judge rejected arguments by prosecutors that the new DNA evidence did not alter the facts known during the three trials.
Grasty’s defense attorney Paul Casteleiro said the ruling served as vindication for all three men.
“This order means so much in that it says this court believes that these guys would be acquitted, they’re innocent,” Casteleiro told CNN. “That’s powerful after all these years of knocking on the door and being denied everywhere they went.”
Casteleiro also emphasized that the legal fight wasn’t over as all three men remain behind bars.
“Until each one of them is out and free, this isn’t over,” he said.
Attorneys said the men hugged and cried in the prison yard when they learned of the positive development in their case.
Nickens was beaten to death inside her home on Oct. 10, 1997.
After the murder, police found semen and evidence of a brutal sexual assault, as well as a green jacket that didn’t belong to the victim, which had been left on top of a TV and had a bag of cocaine in it.
The semen collected at the scene was from an unknown male suspect who was never identified and remains at large, court documents said.
Years after the crime, advances in DNA collection techniques enabled investigators to reexamine evidence for “touch DNA,” which was found on several items at the crime scene matched the semen found on the bedsheet.
Touch DNA refers to DNA that is transferred from a person’s skin cells to an object or surface that they have touched, leaving behind skin cells that can be analyzed for DNA.
In the Nickens murder, more of the same touch DNA was found on the discarded green jacket, as well as on bedsheets and other various items, according to defense attorneys.
During a hearing last August to vet the new evidence, prosecutors tried to suggest that Nickens may have had consensual sex with an unknown individual prior to the brutal home invasion that led to her death.
But Nickens was said to be chronically ill and wasn’t known to have any sexual partners.
A crime scene expert also testified the new biological material included a mixture of the unknown man’s semen, the victim’s blood, and urine on the bedsheet, while the mixture of bodily fluids indicated that the beating and sexual assault happened around the same time.
This testimony contradicted a key prosecution argument that the events were unrelated.
“They just ran this absurd story and got juries to buy it,” Casteleiro said, according to NBC News.
To win the convictions, prosecutors relied on key witness testimony, particularly that from 15-year-old Richard McElwee, who confessed that he helped by standing watch as the three suspects robbed Nickens of $30, court papers said. McElwee, a friend of the three, had been picked up on unrelated drug charges when he implicated himself and his friends in the murder in statements he gave to police.
In exchange for his testimony, McElwee, who is described by the three men’s attorneys as having limited intellectual capacity, was allowed to plead guilty to third-degree murder in Nickens’ death and was sentenced to six to 12 years in 1999 for that murder and other charges, according to court records.
