Race Jones
gangster. grace. alchemy
https://www.inquirer.com/news/phila...hur-johnson-wrongful-conviction-20210811.html
In 2017, Arthur “Cetewayo” Johnson won the right to leave solitary confinement after a remarkable 37 years on “restricted release” status in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections — an indefinite punishment for escape attempts dating back to the 1970s.
Now, the same legal team that advocated to move Johnson into the general population has won an even bigger victory: his release from prison after half a century of incarceration.
On Wednesday, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio agreed the prosecution’s case against Johnson for the 1970 murder of Jerome Wakefield in North Philadelphia was fraught with false and “highly suspect” statements. The DA wrote in a filing that those flaws “seriously undermine the integrity of Johnson’s conviction.”
DiClaudio said the DA’s filing made clear that a 15-year-old witness was coerced during a 30-hour interrogation in which he gave multiple conflicting statements before finally implicating Johnson. “The circumstances of that interrogation, some of it was withheld from your lawyer at the time of trial,” he told Johnson.
Assistant District Attorney Lyandra Retacco, of the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), said Wakefield’s family told her they felt Johnson had served enough time. “They were just kids,” she said they told her. Johnson was two months past his 18th birthday when prosecutors say he stabbed Wakefield, who had already been shot by Johnson’s juvenile codefendant, Gary Brame. Brame was sentenced to five to 15 years.
On Wednesday, Johnson agreed to a 10-to-20-year sentence — effectively time served — and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. Before imposing the sentence, DiClaudio asked Retacco to provide the sentencing guidelines. “Guidelines didn’t exist in 1970,” she said. (Nor did the current third-degree murder statute, sending lawyers and court clerks scrambling to figure out how to correctly code Johnson’s new conviction and sentence so he could be released.)
The Abolitionist Law Center, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, represented Johnson in his pleas first to be released from solitary and then from prison. In 2017, a federal judge wrote in the first case that confining him “for at least 23 hours per day, to an area smaller than the average horse stall,” amounted to “an unconstitutional deprivation.”
In 2017, Arthur “Cetewayo” Johnson won the right to leave solitary confinement after a remarkable 37 years on “restricted release” status in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections — an indefinite punishment for escape attempts dating back to the 1970s.
Now, the same legal team that advocated to move Johnson into the general population has won an even bigger victory: his release from prison after half a century of incarceration.
On Wednesday, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio agreed the prosecution’s case against Johnson for the 1970 murder of Jerome Wakefield in North Philadelphia was fraught with false and “highly suspect” statements. The DA wrote in a filing that those flaws “seriously undermine the integrity of Johnson’s conviction.”
DiClaudio said the DA’s filing made clear that a 15-year-old witness was coerced during a 30-hour interrogation in which he gave multiple conflicting statements before finally implicating Johnson. “The circumstances of that interrogation, some of it was withheld from your lawyer at the time of trial,” he told Johnson.
Assistant District Attorney Lyandra Retacco, of the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), said Wakefield’s family told her they felt Johnson had served enough time. “They were just kids,” she said they told her. Johnson was two months past his 18th birthday when prosecutors say he stabbed Wakefield, who had already been shot by Johnson’s juvenile codefendant, Gary Brame. Brame was sentenced to five to 15 years.
On Wednesday, Johnson agreed to a 10-to-20-year sentence — effectively time served — and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. Before imposing the sentence, DiClaudio asked Retacco to provide the sentencing guidelines. “Guidelines didn’t exist in 1970,” she said. (Nor did the current third-degree murder statute, sending lawyers and court clerks scrambling to figure out how to correctly code Johnson’s new conviction and sentence so he could be released.)
The Abolitionist Law Center, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, represented Johnson in his pleas first to be released from solitary and then from prison. In 2017, a federal judge wrote in the first case that confining him “for at least 23 hours per day, to an area smaller than the average horse stall,” amounted to “an unconstitutional deprivation.”
