Man cleared of murder conviction after 24 years behind bars, with help of an ex-cop

Shaurn Thomas Timeline
https://www.dechert.com/files/Uploads/Documents/Shaurn_Thomas_Timeline_-_Dechert_-_170522.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/05/23/man-cleared-of-murder-conviction-after-24-years-behind-bars-with-help-of-an-ex-cop/?utm_term=.92a08cd2667a

Man cleared of murder conviction after 24 years behind bars, with help of an ex-cop
By Tom Jackman May 23, 2017

Shaurn Thomas had claimed for 16 years that he didn’t kill a popular Philadelphia businessman in a street robbery. He was 16 then, and said he had been at a juvenile court proceeding for trying to steal a motorcycle when the daylight slaying occurred. But the courts weren’t buying it, and Thomas lost appeal after appeal. Convicted almost completely on the testimony of a co-defendant, he was sentenced to life without parole.

Then in 2009, Thomas sent a letter to the newly formed Pennsylvania Innocence Project, and a lawyer named James Figorski happened to open it. Figorski had spent 25 years as a Philadelphia police officer. He knew how the city’s juvenile system worked, and he sensed something wasn’t right. For the next eight years, Figorski volunteered countless hours investigating Thomas’s case, along with Innocence Project legal director Marissa Bluestine, and last year they began meeting with the Philadelphia district attorney’s Conviction Review Unit. And the prosecutors agreed: Thomas was almost certainly innocent. On Tuesday morning, prosecutors moved to vacate Thomas’s murder conviction, and he was released from prison Tuesday evening after nearly 24 years behind bars. On Tuesday night, he had his “first meal” outside of prison, the seafood combination at Red Lobster, his lawyers said.

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“At every level, Shaurn was failed,” Bluestine said. “By his lawyers, by the prosecutors, by the courts. Ironically, it took a former police officer to dig in and prove he’s an innocent man.”

“It happened because he had no money or power,” Figorski said. “They had a cold case they wanted to solve. And they had somebody willing to say [Shaurn] did it.”

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The case was cold for two years, even though there were a number of witnesses, pedestrians and other motorists, who saw the collision and shooting. Then in 1992, a man named John Stallworth confessed to his involvement and named his brother and Thomas as participants. Stallworth’s confession was shown to be false because one of the other participants he named was in prison at the time of the slaying, but Stallworth still was held. In 1993, facing the death penalty, Stallworth changed his story and eliminated the man who was in prison. Thomas was arrested, charged with murder and jailed in July 1993.

Stallworth and his brother William cut plea deals in exchange for their testimony against Thomas and his older brother, Mustafa Thomas. Shaurn Thomas’s lawyer tried to present evidence of his alibi, his arrest and processing at the juvenile center, but “it wasn’t presented with the strength and detail that we have now,” Martin said. Thomas did not take the stand in his defense, and in December 1994 a jury convicted him of second-degree murder, which in Pennsylvania brings a mandatory life sentence without parole.

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In looking at the trial record, Figorski realized that prosecutors had described one car to the jury in opening statements as the suspects’ car, then presented photos of a different car during the trial, after tests done during the trial showed the first car couldn’t have been involved. The tests weren’t turned over to the defense, Figorski said.

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Then in 2011, Bluestine visited William Stallworth in prison. He told her he hadn’t actually seen Shaurn Thomas at the scene because Stallworth hadn’t been at the scene. He lied at trial to help his brother avoid the death penalty, Bluestine said. William Stallworth was later denied parole because he refused to accept responsibility for the crime to which he’d pleaded guilty. And he had been the only witness to place Thomas at the murder scene at trial.

Thomas’s appeals in state and federal court were going nowhere. So Figorski and Bluestine began meeting with a prosecutor from the district attorney’s Conviction Review Unit in November 2016. Members of the unit reviewed the case and interviewed William Stallworth, who again recanted his trial testimony that Thomas had been involved in the homicide.

Shaurn Thomas’s brother Mustafa did not have similar appeal issues and remains incarcerated.

The prosecutors also found 36 pages of witness statements that had not been turned over to the defense during Shaurn Thomas’s trial, some with information implicating other suspects.

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[More details on the case}

http://innocenceprojectpa.org/shaurn-thomas/

October 19, 2013

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