Philadelphia: 7 Suspected Murderers Go Free Thanks to the DA
pacoyogi
away from me. Heck, it's three minutes away from a lot of other
hard-working, taxpaying city dwellers.
Suspects' release stuns city lawyers
Seven murder defendants were set free on a speedy-trial violation.
Defense lawyers say the cases were ready for trial.
By L. Stuart Ditzen
Inquirer Staff Writer
Veteran Philadelphia criminal lawyers say they had never heard of such
a thing before - seven accused murderers freed from prison in a single
stroke.
"I've never seen it happen," said William T. Cannon, who has been
trying homicide cases in Philadelphia, as a prosecutor and a defense
lawyer, for three decades. "It is unprecedented in my experience."
Seven men, accused members of a ruthless West Philadelphia drug gang,
were ordered released from prison last week because the District
Attorney's Office was found to have delayed too long in bringing them
to trial, in violation of Pennsylvania's one-year speedy-trial rule.
A sharply drawn dispute has arisen between prosecutors and defense
lawyers on whether the defendants, who had been in prison since 1997
and 1998, could and should have been tried on murder charges five or
six years ago.
Defense lawyers contend that the District Attorney's Office had
adequate evidence to bring the men to trial in the late 1990s, but
dragged out pretrial proceedings for years seeking to add a
racketeering charge to the case.
"They didn't need any fancy charge for this case," said Dennis J.
Cogan, lawyer for alleged gang leader James Drayton, who is now free.
"They didn't need the corrupt organization [racketeering] charge. It
makes no sense."
Jack McMahon, who represented Rudolph McGriff, 29, another defendant
who has been freed, shared that view.
"I didn't understand why they were so hell-bent on having it," McMahon
said. "If anybody tells you they needed the racketeering charge to go
forward on this, it's totally not true."
The state Supreme Court on July 13 upheld lower court rulings that the
District Attorney's Office had carried on "frivolous" and "bad faith"
pretrial appeals to get the racketeering charge reinstated after it
was dismissed in 1998. Thus, the speedy-trial rule - which normally
can be stretched for pretrial appeals - had been violated.
Cathie Abookire, spokeswoman for District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham,
said this week that the discharge of Drayton and his codefendants,
accused of murders and a host of other violent crimes, had caused
anguish among prosecutors.
Abookire said the office categorically denies any bad-faith motive in
its pretrial appeals.
"Why would we want to delay the prosecution of seven murderers?"
Abookire said. "There's no reason on earth to do that. We needed that
racketeering charge to stitch this together to show the
interdependence of these acts."
Drayton, 30, and six codefendants were charged with waging a bloody
turf war to control drug trade in the Mantua section of West
Philadelphia during the 1990s.
The charges included five murders, aggravated assaults, kidnapping,
terroristic threats, witness intimidation, firearms violations, and,
originally, racketeering under Pennsylvania's Corrupt Organizations
Act.
Hugh J. Burns Jr., chief of the district attorney's appeals unit, said
the racketeering charge was essential to the case because it would
have enabled prosecutors to prove that a smorgasbord of crimes were
committed for a common purpose - to benefit the gang. Standing alone,
Burns said, the charges would have been much more difficult to prove.
"That's why that statute was invented," Burns said. "Their reasons for
doing something don't make a lot of sense without that context, that
backdrop. They're doing these crimes to further the interests of the
gang."
But the racketeering charge was dismissed in 1998 by Common Pleas
Court Judge Carolyn E. Temin based on a fine point in the law: A state
racketeering charge at that time required evidence of infiltration of
a legitimate business. A gang selling crack cocaine didn't qualify.
Later, that law was changed to include illegitimate businesses, but
the change was not made retroactive. Even so, the District Attorney's
Office pressed an appeal in the state Superior and Supreme Courts
seeking to reinstate the racketeering charge.
In 2001, Cogan, Drayton's lawyer, sought dismissal of all charges,
saying prosecutors, while delaying a trial, had abused the legal
process by switching legal theories and misstating the lower-court
record in the appellate courts.
Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner granted the dismissal order
and wrote an opinion in 2002 chastising the District Attorney's Office
for "bad faith" conduct. Lerner's ruling was upheld by the higher
courts.
But the question remains: Could Drayton and the other defendants -
McGriff; DeWitt Drayton, 29, cousin of James Drayton; Sherman
Fletcher, 29; Anwar Sands, 28; David Williams, 29; and Raymond
Nesbitt, 30 - have been tried on straight homicide charges?
The answer, clearly, was yes. After a lengthy preliminary hearing in
1997, the defendants were held for trial on murder charges and most
other charges. Whether they would have been convicted, had they gone
to trial, is open to debate.
The strongest evidence against Drayton and his codefendants came from
two admitted drug dealers, one of whom was convicted of murder, who
were given immunity for their testimony.
The central crime in the case was a quadruple murder in which Drayton
and his associates were accused of executing four members of a rival
drug gang inside a house in the 1000 block of Pallas Street on Feb. 4,
1995.
Prosecutors had a witness - if a highly unsavory one - named Charles
"Lucky Luciano" Harmer, who professed knowledge of those killings.
For his testimony, Harmer, then 23, was given a grant of immunity in
1997 and a deal: a prison sentence of only 21/2 years for a murder in
which he had shot a friend to death over a $1,600 debt.
An alleged member of Drayton's gang, Harmer testified at a hearing in
July 1997 that the victims on Pallas Street - Mark Conover, Troy
Johnson, David Philmore and Robert Williams - were killed because they
had resisted an attempt by Drayton to take over a drug corner at 43d
and Pennsgrove Streets.
Harmer said Drayton and three other gang members carried out the
killings and then bragged about them at a gang hangout in the 800
block of North 47th Street. Describing what he was told, Harmer
testified:
"They said they hit the boy Rob first. They hit him first in the head.
He was sitting by the door. They hit him in the head - boom. And then
they said they started shooting at Troy. He was screaming. And then
they start, they shot Mark, who was on the bed... ."
Harmer said he was excited by this talk. "I was getting all hyped," he
said. "I was mad because I wasn't there."
As grotesque as that testimony might sound to a jury, defense lawyers
say that criminal cases can often be won with dubious witnesses such
as Harmer.
But there were no tapes or videos to corroborate Harmer's story.
Prosecutors say they feared - in this case and with this witness - a
jury might render an acquittal on murder charges.
Your Shadow
the DA was letting them languish in prison for years without a trial
because she was waiting for the chance to stick on a racketerring charge
on top of a murder charge she already had the evidence for. Let this be
a lesson to the DA's office. Next time go with what you have instead of
what you want. If Lynne Abraham had been in charge of prosecuting Al
Capone, he'd have walked for sure because instead of going to court with
the evidence of tax evasion, she would have held out for a murder charge
the government couldnt make stick.
Robert N. Lee
> Actually you know what? Murderers or not, they desserved to go free if
> the DA was letting them languish in prison for years without a trial
> because she was waiting for the chance to stick on a racketerring charge
> on top of a murder charge she already had the evidence for.
Yeah, agreed. It's not like this is a good thing, but waiting around for
six years for a trial is total horseshit. What's up with Pennsylvania,
anyway? They seem to cook up a lot of strange procedural crap like this in
that state. (Trying Einhorn in absentia, bizarre court actions in the Mumia
case that help delusionals convince themselves he's innocent, etc.)
--Robert
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