Our client was convicted of first degree murder and had served seventeen years of a life sentence. The case arose from a shooting in West Philadelphia. Our client maintained that he had acted in self-defense when another person started firing his weapon at him. We were hired to pursue a newly discovered evidence claim under the PCRA.
The investigation revealed that there was a ten year old boy that saw the incident in question nearly twenty years ago. Now in his late twenties, this witness explained that he had seen the decedent pull his weapon first and started firing. The evidence also showed that there were several shell casings surrounding the decedent’s body that did not match the weapon that our client had fired. The police never located the gun that the decedent had fired. However, our witness explained that immediately after the shooting, friends of the deceased took his gun and disposed of it.
After a two day, hotly contested evidentiary hearing, the court ruled in our client’s favor and vacated his first degree murder conviction. Our client has been granted a new trial and now has a strong chance of avoiding a life sentence and instead coming home soon.
