Hundreds of pages of court documents obtained by NBC10 are shedding new light on a Philadelphia murder investigation that ended in an acquittal and is now fueling a public dispute between the city’s top law enforcement officials.<\/p>\n
The case centers on Eric Lewis, who was acquitted in the 2019 shooting death of Christopher Williams<\/a>. Lewis is now facing murder charges in the killing of Philadelphia Police Sgt. Shane Seiber earlier this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel have publicly clashed over the handling of the earlier investigation, with Krasner blaming flawed police work for the acquittal.<\/p>\n “The truth is that acquittal was the direct result of one of the worst investigations that I have seen in nearly 40 years of criminal practice,” Krasner said.<\/p>\n Bethel quickly pushed back against Krasner’s criticism.<\/p>\n “We fight behind the scenes all the time, but we never bring that to the forefront, particularly in a time like that. So, it was absolutely unacceptable,” Bethel said.<\/p>\n More than 200 pages of court transcripts obtained by NBC10 reveal investigative issues in the Williams murder case, including questions about cellphone records that were never obtained.<\/p>\n Cellphone records can be used by prosecutors to help connect a defendant to the scene of a crime. But according to the transcripts, that evidence was never collected in Lewis’ case.<\/p>\n During court proceedings, Lewis’ defense attorney pointed out that “detectives were going to obtain cell phone records — the call details and such \u2013 for the defendant\u2019s cell phones.”<\/p>\n The attorney went on to explain that he had been advised “there was never a warrant requested or obtained to get the information.”<\/p>\n The judge later confirmed in court that prosecutors had never obtained those records.<\/p>\n The missing evidence raises questions about how the investigation was handled and whether the oversight should have been identified before the case went to trial.<\/p>\n The documents obtained by NBC10 offer only a snapshot of the larger investigation and the decisions made before Lewis went to trial.<\/p>\n Krasner has pointed to the Philadelphia Police Department’s handling of the investigation as the reason the case ended in an acquittal.<\/p>\n But other prosecutors told NBC10 that the district attorney’s office also has a responsibility to identify investigative gaps and address problems while building a case.<\/p>\n That includes ensuring important evidence, such as cellphone records, is obtained before a case goes to trial.<\/p>\n The revelations are adding to the public disagreement between Krasner and Bethel as Lewis faces a new murder charge in the death of Officer Seiber. <\/p>\n This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC Philadelphia. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC Philadelphia journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of pages of court documents obtained by NBC10 are shedding new light on a Philadelphia murder investigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-316793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316793","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=316793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}