Philadelphia man is acquitted of shooting after about 12 years in prison

A Philadelphia judge on Monday acquitted a man in an attempted murder case after he spent about 12 years in prison in connection with a shooting for which officials said there was weak evidence and the prosecution did not meet the burden of proof. The decision ended a years-long battle to overturn his conviction.

The man, Charles Rice, who goes by CJ, was serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence in connection with a 2011 shooting that injured four people, according to court records. He was convicted in 2013 of multiple charges, including four attempted murders.

In November, a federal judge vacated his conviction after the state admitted that Mr. Rice’s original attorney had “provided ineffective assistance.” The judge gave the state 180 days to decide whether to retry Mr. Rice or dismiss the charges.

On Monday, the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas granted the state’s request to dismiss all charges.

“We know that presenting all of the credible evidence does not provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said at a news conference Monday.

In refusing to retry Mr. Rice, the prosecutor’s office conceded that it would not meet the burden of proof for the charges, which the office said amounted to an exoneration for Mr. Rice. Judge James Eisenhower granted the prosecutor’s request and dropped all charges.

The turnaround in the case had been in the making for years, but gained national attention in November 2022 when Jake Tapper, a CNN correspondent and anchor, wrote about Mr.’s case. Rice for The Atlantic.

Of being a free man, Mr. Rice told CNN on Monday that “the air tastes sweeter, the sun shines differently – that is a different warmth.”

Mr. Rice, now 30, has spent more than 12 years in prison. He has been at home on bail since December.

The case dates back to September 25, 2011, when a shooting occurred in South Philadelphia that injured four people. According to court documents, only one of the four victims was able to identify Mr. Rice as a possible suspect, despite not having seen him for four years. Mr. Rice had been seriously injured in another shooting just weeks earlier, and prosecutors tried to bolster their case by arguing that the shooting was retaliation.

Mr. Rice’s then-attorney agreed to allow the evidence about possible motive to be presented against him, a move that the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, which helped with Mr. Rice’s appeal, said directly contributed to his conviction in 2013.

William Fritze, an assistant district attorney who heads the office’s gun violence task force, said at Monday’s news conference that after his office’s assessment “it became quite clear to us that we were not going to be able to do a to achieve reasonable measures.” doubt in this case whether to continue.”

In one case, a woman described Mr. Rice in an eyewitness account as having braids hanging around his face at the time of the shooting, but Mr. Rice’s booking photo showed him in cornrows, with his hair pulled completely back. said Frits. She claimed to have seen Mr. Rice looking over her shoulder.

A review of a 911 call also found that a neighbor who witnessed the shooting had such a clear view of the shooter that they were able to describe what he was wearing — a blue shirt and jeans — but Mr. Fritze said there was never any testimony or further investigation into that account.

“A lot of what happened previously in Mr. Rice’s case was that the system didn’t work,” Assistant District Attorney Katherine Ernst said at the news conference. “When we agreed that Mr. Rice’s conviction should be overturned after a thorough investigation, the system finally worked. This level of care we take in our cases should be a model for post-conviction prosecution.”

Nilam Sanghvi, legal director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, said the factors that led to Mr. Rice’s conviction are all too common in criminal prosecutions, and that the new investigation into the case by the district attorney’s office should have been carried out twelve years ago. .

“It takes courage to face the mistakes of the past,” she said. “We can never really put them right because we can’t restore the years lost to a wrongful conviction here, more than a decade of CJ’s life. But it is important to recognize them, learn from them and remedy what we can.”