Pennsylvania Death

by PENNSYLVANIA ABOLITIONISTS

PHILADELPHIA (October 20, 2000) -- Today in Philadelphia, a jury came back with a not guilty verdict in the retrial of William Nieves, first arrested for a murder in 1992. Nieves will be 35 on October 31, 2000. Nieves, who has spent the past eight years on death row, except for the period of his retrial when he was held at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on State Road, is a free man. The jury deliberated for about a day.

Nieves was granted a new trial in 1997 by the trial court in post-verdict motions, when his attorney, Jack McMahon, argued that Nieves' trial attorney had improperly advised him not to testify, against his wishes. The re-trial was delayed for over two years while Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Roger King appealed the trial court's decision and struggled to preserve the conviction and death sentence.

Nieves has steadfastly maintained his innocence. At the retrial McMahon again represented Nieves, and it became clear that the prosecution suppressed evidence in the initial trial.

Among the evidence was the testimony of eyewitnesses --including an informant the prosecutors themselves sought out-who identified the shooter as a physically large African-American male; Nieves is a Latino of medium size. Zealous advocacy and judicious evidentiary rulings from Judge Mazzola, who was assigned the retrial, resulted in Nieves obtaining discovery the Commonwealth had previously withheld. Despite overwhelming evidence that they had the wrong man, the prosecution persisted, withholding evidence until the last possible moment.

At one point prosecutors attempted to introduce traffic tickets from three years prior to the offense that purportedly placed someone named Nieves -- with a different date of birth -- in a vehicle similar to the one at the shooting. Judge Mazzola denied the prosecutor's attempts to introduce the traffic tickets on the grounds that they would not prove anything, but declined to comment on the fact that the prosecution had evidently held onto the tickets since 1992. McMahon, however, noted in argument that it was strange that the tickets had suddenly appeared, after eight years, halfway through the retrial.

Nieves took an active part in his own defense. He is well liked by other inmates on death row and has been helping out in the CFCF law library for the past few months.

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PENNSYLVANIA ABOLITIONISTS

United Against the Death Penalty

P.O. Box 58128, Philadelphia, PA 19102

Phone: 215-724-6120 Fax: 215-729-6189

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