Judge grants new trials for three Chester men who say they were falsely accused of a 1997 murder

Three Delaware County men who have spent more than two decades in prison for a murder they say they did not commit are one step closer to possible freedom after a judge on Thursday granted them new trials.

Derrick Chappell, Samuel Grasty, and Morton Johnson were barely out of high school in 1997 when police accused them of killing an elderly Chester woman found beaten and sexually assaulted in her apartment. Each man was found guilty of murder and related crimes by juries in the early 2000s and received de facto life sentences.

But over 20 years and a series of appeals, the three men maintained their innocence, as their lawyers said unreliable witnesses, a false confession, and unscrupulous police work led to their clients’ improper arrests.

Their plea for new trials advanced last August during hearings before a Common Pleas Court judge in which their lawyers contended that if Chappell, 41, Grasty, 46, and Johnson, 42, were tried today, DNA technology that was not available in 1997 would exonerate them by proving that a single, unknown perpetrator had assaulted 70-year-old Henrietta Nickens.

Common Pleas Court Judge Mary Alice Brennan on Thursday ordered that the three men be granted new trials — though whether those trials occur will depend on whether Delaware County prosecutors choose to appeal the order or retry the case.

“We’re ecstatic,” said Paul Casteleiro, Grasty’s defense attorney and the legal director of exoneration nonprofit Centurion. “It’s an order that affirms what we’ve been telling the Delaware District Attorney’s Office for years — that these guys are innocent.”

Casteleiro said Brennan’s order means that if the evidence from the August hearings were presented at a new trial, there’s a likelihood that “the verdict would be different.” Casteleiro said he’s “hopeful this is the beginning of the end.”

“We are hopeful the commonwealth will not appeal and that our clients can begin to move on with their journeys,” said Nilam Sanghvi, legal director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, one of the exoneration groups representing Chappell.

The Delaware County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

The court set a May 23 bail hearing for Chappell, Grasty, and Johnson.

Casteleiro said he spoke to Grasty’s mother by phone Thursday, and had given the message to State Correctional Institution Phoenix, where Grasty is incarcerated, and expected a call from him later.

“It’s kind of overwhelming in a lot of ways,” the attorney said of his conversation with Grasty’s mother. “You could imagine what his mom thinks and the emotion that’s attached to everything — for 25 years, it’s ‘I didn’t do this, I had nothing to do with it’, and then finally, finally, finally, someone is saying, ‘Yeah, we agree with you.’ "

David Haase, one of Chappell’s attorneys who took the case pro bono, said it was “impossible to adequately convey the emotions” of his call with Chappell’s mother Thursday. “In all my days,” he said, “I will never forget that call.”

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