Take a moment and try to remember 25 years ago. That would have been 1999. Think about how old you were then and how many things have happened to you in those years, both good and bad, all the things that went on in the world then and since. Now imagine that, in 1999, you were arrested for a crime you did not commit, convicted of a crime you did not commit because the cops ignored or covered up evidence that you didn’t do it, and because the prosecutors didn’t feel like they should have to tell your lawyers that the eyewitness who got the best look at whoever did commit the crime said it definitely was not you.
Now imagine that you had to spend every day of the next 25 years in a windowless cell, by yourself, on death row, with your meals slid under the door and maybe a few hours of fresh air a week.
That is what happened to Jimmy Dennis.
Jimmy Dennis was an up-and-coming R&B singer in 1991 when he was arrested for the murder of high school student Chedell Ray Williams for her $450 earrings. He told police he was riding the bus home from his father’s house at that time — which another passenger confirmed, though that small detail, like so many others, was buried by police and prosecutors.
Via The Philadelphia Inquirer:
A federal judge overturned his conviction in 2013, calling it a “grave miscarriage of justice.” She said homicide detectives ignored or “covered up” evidence that proved Dennis did not shoot a high school girl to death for her gold earrings. And she ordered prosecutors to hold a new trial for Dennis or set him free.
Three years later, while Dennis was waiting for that trial to begin, prosecutors offered him a deal. If he pleaded no contest to third-degree murder, they would agree to his immediate release from prison.
He took the deal, and was released in 2017 — after 25 years in prison. And you’ll never guess what happened next.
Lawyers for the city later argued that because Dennis had not been acquitted, he should not be able to sue for damages over what he described as the willful misconduct of police and prosecutors who built the case that wrongfully put him behind bars.
They thought they were running a pretty neat scam there — taking a person under the duress of solitary confinement and offering them a chance to get out of there, even if it means admitting to a crime they didn’t do and that the lawyers for the city knew they couldn’t prove they did.
But a jury last Thursday didn’t buy any of that nonsense and awarded Dennis $16 million. $10 million of that is compensatory damages from the city of Philadelphia itself, but the other six million? $3 million from each of the two cops the jury determined “engaged in malicious or wanton misconduct.” You know, like covering up evidence that someone is innocent?
Whether or not the detectives are actually able to pay that much is besides the point. That a jury decided they should be held accountable, is a huge deal in and of itself. There needs to be repercussions for that behavior. They stole 25 years of this man’s life, they deprived him of being with his father for the years before he died, they deprived him of watching his children grow up — and, by the way, let an actual murderer off the hook. While that’s not a crime that will ever get anyone sent to prison, it’s nice to see some consequences.
A huge part of the problem here is that we have a system that rewards the exact behavior that sent Jimmy Dennis to prison for 25 years for a crime he did not commit. We have a system in which cops are rewarded for closing cases, prosecutors are rewarded for guilty verdicts whether or not the person is actually guilty, and which values “finality” over accuracy. There is rarely any actual downside to covering up and ignoring evidence that someone is innocent. They get all the praise and the thanks for grateful victims and/or their families, the commendations that go with having solved a case or won a trial, and then if they’re ever found out, they’re usually going to be protected by qualified immunity and prosecutorial immunity, which is absolute.
These tragedies are compounded by the severity of our sentencing and the conditions of our prisons, which I will once again remind you violate The Mandela Rules (the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners) in pretty much every way it is possible to do so. It’s bad enough to incarcerate someone for 25 years, but to put them in solitary confinement for that long is unconscionable.
We should be thrilled for Jimmy Dennis seeing some semblance of justice and heartbroken that it was necessary at all. Clearly, something needs to change.
Dennis, who has an absolutely gorgeous voice by the way, never gave up on music and credited it with helping him survive those 25 years alone.
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