{"id":202909,"date":"2026-05-26T22:04:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T22:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/202909\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T22:04:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T22:04:06","slug":"nearly-30-year-old-conviction-overturned-in-philly-3-men-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/202909\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly 30-year-old conviction overturned in Philly, 3 men released"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner\u2019s office announced Tuesday that three men have been exonerated of a murder in North Philadelphia nearly 30 years ago.\n<\/p>\n<p>Mark Brittingham, Jermel Shuler and Rasheed Smith were convicted in 1998 of the November 1997 killing of 73-year-old Essie Thomas.\n<\/p>\n<p>Krasner said the flaw in the case came from an incorrect determination of the time of death by the Medical Examiner\u2019s Office. He said that brings the entire case, including an identification by an eyewitness, into question.\n  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat medical examiner identified a time of death that was way off, and that was a very important fact because it connected to when a witness claimed she saw three men on the porch. There are some real problems with that witness whose lies were documented by police officers who were actually present,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n<p>No one specifically claimed to have witnessed the incident. One woman claimed to see the three men leaving Thomas\u2019 house on Saturday night, Nov. 8, 1997, the last day Thomas was known to be alive.\n<\/p>\n<p>The DA\u2019s Conviction Integrity Unit retained its own board-certified forensic pathology expert who, based on the same information available to the medical examiner at trial, also challenged the medical examiner\u2019s range for the time of death.\n<\/p>\n<p>Krasner added that his office believes the unidentified witness received benefits in exchange for their testimony.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is apparent that those untruths were told for the purpose of her having better housing, better accommodations, which were being provided,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n<p>He said the judge threw the case out and that his office doesn\u2019t have enough evidence to retry a nearly 30-year-old case.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13361,89587,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-202909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-cold-case","tag-exoneration","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}