A man cleared of a Philly murder in ’17 will be charged in a new homicide
A man who was cleared of a wrongful murder conviction in 2017 was arrested Saturday and will be charged with committing a new homicide in North Philadelphia, authorities said.
Shaurn Thomas, 48, was taken into custody Saturday morning in Chester County and is expected to face charges including murder in connection with the fatal shooting of 38-yearold Akeem Edwards on the 3500 block of Germantown Avenue on Jan. 3, said Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore.
The circumstances of how and why police believe Thomas killed Edwards were not clear. Vanore said he could not provide details.
Still, Thomas is not the only one charged in the case: In an unusual twist, authorities have also filed murder charges against Ketra Veasy, the sister of Willie Veasy, whose murder conviction was also overturned a few years ago.
The connection between Thomas and Veasy, and the reasons they allegedly targeted Edwards, were not clear. Charging documents filed against Veasy last week did not include any details about her alleged role in the crime, and she did not have an attorney listed in court documents.
Thomas’ attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Thomas was released from prison in 2017 after a judge agreed to vacate his 1993 murder conviction due to issues with the evidence used against him. Thomas had been sentenced to life behind bars for participating in the robbery and fatal shooting of 78-year-old Domingo Martinez in North Philadelphia.
Thomas always insisted he was innocent, and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project took up his case.
Prosecutors agreed to review it and said they discovered a long-missing homicide file that contained information about an alternate suspect that had been improperly withheld from Thomas’ defense lawyers. They also interviewed prison officials from the early 1990s who offered information that they believe bolstered Thomas’ longstanding alibi: that he was in Center City, at a juvenile jail, on the day Martinez was shot.
A judge agreed that Thomas’ conviction was tainted, and prosecutors declined to retry him, saying there was little credible evidence left. Three years later, Thomas settled a civil suit against the city for $4.15 million.
Thomas was freed just months before District Attorney Larry Krasner was sworn into office. The reform-oriented prosecutor would go on to dramatically expand the unit focused on reviewing old convictions, and prosecutors have since helped overturn dozens of cases, nearly all of them murders.
One of them was Willie Veasy’s case. Veasy spent 27 years behind bars for a killing he insisted he did not commit, and Krasner’s office came to agree. Prosecutors said in court documents that they believed his supposed confession — a key piece of evidence against him at trial — had been coerced by detectives.
“Innocent people shouldn’t be sitting in jail cells,” Krasner said shortly after a judge agreed to overturn Veasy’s conviction. “It’s not that hard. The system should be just.”
One of Veasy’s staunchest advocates was his sister, Ketra, who was with him the day he was released and later sought to help him reacclimate to life outside of prison.
On March 16, court documents show, detectives arrested Ketra Veasy and charged her with murder in connection with Edwards’ killing.
Thomas, meanwhile, had been charged in Chester County last month with illegal gun possession after detectives — executing a search warrant in connection with that murder — found a stolen gun in his house.
A judge dismissed the gun charge at a preliminary hearing last week because authorities had not proven that the weapon had been loaded when Thomas possessed it. But Thomas was held for court on a count of receiving stolen property.