Finally, Justice - Philadelphia Man Exonerated After 11 Years

Monday morning, at the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia, Judge James Eisenhower granted the motion offered by District Attorney Larry Krasner, one in a group of recently elected, progressively-minded district attorneys (Krasner’s administration has supported 44 exonerations of 43 wrongfully convicted people) to drop all charges against C.J. Rice for a 2011 shooting that sent him to prison for more than a dozen years for a crime he insists he did not and could not have physically committed.

Rice was just 17 years old when he was sentenced to 30–60 years for a shooting in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Point Breeze that hurt four people, including a 6-year-old girl. Now, at the age of 30, Rice’s case was dismissed after a federal judge said his defense attorney was “deficient” and the evidence presented against him in the trial “slender.”

According to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, a key witness didn’t cooperate with authorities during the trial, and the person who identified Rice as the shooter in the case didn’t respond to a request to be re-interviewed. None of the other victims identified Rice as a shooter.

Leading up to dropping his charges Monday, Krasner’s officially acknowledged that Rice did not have adequate counsel. Krasner’s sentencing review committee, after reviewing and investigating the details of the case, recommended that Pennsylvania drop the case against Rice, believing that they could not convince a jury to believe he committed the crimes of which he was convicted. The DA’s office has acknowledged in recent months that the case handled by prior prosecutors was weak from the start and that there wasn’t much actual evidence tying Rice to the crime. “The thing that likely resulted in his conviction was that his defense council was so ineffective,” according to the DA's office.

Rice's case captured national attention when CNN anchor and Philadelphia native Jake Tapper published an article in The Atlantic calling Rice’s initial defense “dangerously incompetent.” On the news that Rice was exonerated, Tapper followed up his previous piece in The Atlantic with "Finally, Justice," detailing Rice's journey through the exoneration process that led to his name being officially cleared.

"For me personally, I'm glad to see this wrong righted," Rice told Tapper in an interview on CNN. "Can't call it a mistake. Because the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s judicial system had at least five separate times to correct this specifici situation, and chose not to act in the interest of justice. Either the Court did not review the case as the public trust endowed the court the ability to do so, or the Pennsylvania Courts did review the case and chose to allow a clear inuustice to stand for as long as no one else knew what was going on. For that, the Pennsylvania court system is blameworthy and not worthy of any confidence. Nonetheless, my comment to any DA, state, prosecutor, commonwealth who has an innocent person behind bars, let them free!"

“The sun shines different, it’s a different warmth,” Rice said. “To feel this suddenly as a free man, I can’t put it into words.”

If you have a subscription to The Atlantic, you can read Jake Tapper's first feature about CJ Rice "This Is Not Justice" from October 2022, and this week's follow-up "Finally, Justice."

You can also watch Tapper's Interview with C.J. Rice on CNN --->> Man incarcerated as a teen is freed after more than 12 years in prison