A man who spent 22 years in prison for a South Philly robbery will be released after someone else confessed to the crime

Nehemiah Young-Graves has never seen his father outside of prison. The 22-year-old was born the day his dad was charged with taking part in a violent robbery in South Philadelphia — a crime in which two coconspirators also raped a woman — and he grew up watching as his father, Keith Graves, fought to prove his innocence.

On Wednesday, Young-Graves was inside a Center City courtroom as his father’s conviction was overturned. A judge agreed that the jury’s guilty verdict could not stand because new evidence undercut the original theory of the case, and prosecutors said they were dropping all charges.

Graves will likely be released from prison this week, possibly as soon as Wednesday evening.

“It’s surreal,” Young-Graves said. “Seeing my dad in the facility my entire life, and only really being able to hug him when I was little, it’s like a faint memory in my head. So this is something big.”

Graves’ exoneration — which will free him from a sentence of 23½ to 65 years — was years in the making. He had long insisted his conviction for the 2001 robbery was flimsy, and in 2017, a Common Pleas Court judge agreed.

Still, the judge, Teresa M. Sarmina, said she was unable to grant Graves’ appellate petition due to procedural issues, but she took the highly unusual step of writing to the District Attorney’s Office and urging prosecutors to look into the case, saying “[n]o one benefits from having innocent people in jail.”

Prosecutors in the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit began reviewing the case in earnest in 2022, they said in court documents. And in January, Jessica Attie and Sara Cohbra, both assistant district attorneys, went to the State Correctional Institution-Dallas to interview a man imprisoned for an unrelated murder who had long been considered an alternate suspect in the robbery. Almost as soon as the prosecutors met the man, they said, he confessed, providing details that would have been nearly impossible to have known had he not been a participant, including where coconspirators were during the chaotic incident, and what role each of them played at various times.

The man became emotional, prosecutors wrote in court documents, asking them to apologize to Graves on his behalf, and saying “he was sorry Graves had spent so much time in prison, away from his family.”

Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio said Wednesday that the level of detail in the man’s confession was compelling, and he agreed to toss Graves’ conviction out. Prosecutors said they had almost no evidence left to retry Graves, and dropped all charges, securing his freedom.

David Rudovsky, one of Graves’ attorneys, said he was grateful that a two-decade fight for Graves’ release was finally over.

“We’ve now proven beyond any doubt that Mr. Graves was not involved and we’re grateful to the court for releasing him,” Rudovsky said. “He’s lost 20 years of his life which he should not have and we’re finally happy that he’s been vindicated.”

The crime for which Graves was convicted was a 2001 robbery at the Ten Spot Bar in South Philadelphia. At the time, police and prosecutors believed that Graves and two other men — Takay Taylor and his brother, David — entered around 1:40 a.m. with ski masks and guns, then ordered people to the ground and told them to hand over their valuables. The man initially identified as Graves took people to the basement, prosecutors said, while Takay Taylor and another coconspirator, Todd White, who had been in the bar posing as a patron before the robbery began, took a woman upstairs and raped her.

But prosecutors now say that the evidence implicating Graves was “tenuous at best.” Several witnesses said only that they heard a voice that sounded like Graves’, prosecutors said, and the one witness to identify him as a participant gave a physical description of Graves that “bore no resemblance to him.”

In addition, prosecutors said, Takay Taylor and White said Graves was not involved, both before and after trial, although their statements were often inconsistent or conflicting.

Still, Graves was convicted, and for years his appeals were denied. And even though there were repeated efforts to interview the alternate suspect in the case, it wasn’t until January that he confessed. Prosecutors, in court documents, didn’t offer a theory about why he finally broke down.

With Graves now free, it appears unlikely that that man who confessed could be charged in his place. The statute of limitations for aggravated assault is just five years.

Still, prosecutors said in court documents that his confession may have other implications. They’re reinvestigating the conviction of David Taylor, a fourth coconspirator whose connection to the crime they also said is limited. Prosecutors said the man who confessed told them David Taylor wasn’t involved.

As for Graves, his sister, Donnamarie, 61, said she couldn’t wait to hug him as a free man.

And Graves’ son, Young-Graves, said he planned to take his father out for a good meal — and begin the process of developing a relationship beyond the walls of a prison.

“I’ll take him anywhere he wants,” Young-Graves said. “I’d love to get to know my dad. That’s going to be something interesting. A new adventure.”