Their parents watched them grow up in jail. Now, new DNA evidence could get them another trial.

Henrietta Nickens was 70 years old when her daughter found her lying face down in her one-bedroom Chester apartment, her blood smeared on the wall and pooled on the sheets of her twin bed. Nickens’ face had been badly beaten, according to police reports. Her underwear had been removed, and investigators suggested she’d been sexually assaulted.

Police soon arrested two men and a teenager, alleging the three Chester residents had broken into Nickens’ home that October evening, brutally assaulted her, and left her for dead.

That was in 1997. Today, Derrick Chappell, Samuel Grasty, and Morton Johnson are grown men, sentenced to essentially spend the rest of their lives behind bars after they were convicted of murder, burglary, and related charges in the early 2000s for Nickens’ death. They were 15, 20, and 18, respectively.

But over two decades and numerous appeals, Chappell, Grasty, and Johnson have all maintained their innocence. Their lawyers say unreliable witnesses, a false confession, and unscrupulous police work led to their clients’ arrests for a crime they did not commit.

And at a post-conviction hearing on Tuesday before Court of Common Pleas Judge Mary Alice Brennan, those lawyers made what they said was their strongest argument yet that their clients should receive new trials.

Presenting a newly conducted DNA analysis, they argued that Nickens’ assault and murder was committed by a single perpetrator, one whose genealogy doesn’t match that of Chappell, Grasty, or Johnson.

“The jurors would likely view the evidence differently today,” said Nilam A. Sanghvi, legal director for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, the criminal justice nonprofit representing Chappell. “This unknown male would take center stage at trial.”

Prosecutors have never disputed that semen recovered from Nickens’ body is no match to the DNA of Chappell, Grasty, or Johnson.

In fact, their DNA analysis from the initial investigation led them to drop their initial charges of rape and sexual assault, while continuing to try the men for murder.

In explaining then how the DNA from Nickens factored into the case, prosecutors suggested the elderly woman had consensual sex shortly before the assault (Nickens’ family maintains she was not sexually active and was ill at the time of her death). Another theory offered was that someone broke into Nickens’ home and, finding her beaten by the suspects, assaulted her as she died.

The Pennsylvania Innocence Project, a statewide organization, and the nationally focused Innocence Project took Chappell and Johnson’s cases around 2016, while another justice group, Centurion, took Grasty’s. Their attorneys remain highly skeptical of those theories — ones prosecutors reiterated Tuesday.

“The idea they’re still pushing, that this woman had consensual sex, is preposterous,” said Paul Casteleiro, Grasty’s attorney.

It’s modern DNA analysis that allowed Alan Keel, an expert on post-conviction DNA analysis, to test for biological traces of Chappell, Grasty, and Johnson on Nickens’ bedding and nightdress, as well as a green jacket, size XXXL, left in Nickens’ bedroom.

Keel found nothing, he testified.

“I would expect to recover some biology from them,” Keel said, had the three men beaten Nickens to death.

Keel instead found that DNA from the jacket — which Nickens’ family said hadn’t been present in the home just hours before her death — matched DNA recovered from her body, a stain on her bedsheet, and a chewed straw in the jacket’s pocket.

That DNA, referred to as “Unknown Male 1,” didn’t match any genealogical profiles in national databases, according to Keel. But it wasn’t from any of the three accused, either.

His findings, Keel testified, supported the defendants’ conclusion that Nickens was beaten to death and assaulted by just one person.

Prosecutors,in turn, said the defense had “tunnel vision” and refused to consider alternate theories that implicated their clients. Above all, they reminded the court that the men had ultimately been convicted by juries.

Throughout the nearly six-hour hearing, families and friends waited patiently for the ruling that would determine the future of Chappell, Grasty, and Johnson’s cases.

That ruling never came. Due to a scheduling issue, a detective ready to testify on behalf of the defendants wasn’t available to take the stand. A new hearing was set for Aug 22.

For Kenyett Levue, Johnson’s sister, patiently waiting is nothing new.

The 47-year-old’s younger brother was convicted for Nickens’ murder while he was still in his early 20s. Levue and her family have since watched Johnson mature from behind the glass of a county prison visitation booth.

To this day, Levue is confident that all three men were wrongfully accused.

“We have our good days, we have our bad days,” Levue said outside the courtroom, wearing a white ‘Free Morton Johnson’ shirt. “We’re not able to say ‘I love you’ in person, or give him a hug in person. It’s been wear and tear, so much trauma and heartache.”

Levue said her brother has always been a kind, intelligent, witty person. Johnson, now 43, has become a bit sarcastic in prison, Levue said — “but that’s to be expected.”

“We lost so many memories we can’t get back,” Levue said. She now calls the Innocence Project lawyers working on her brother’s case her ‘A-Team.’ “All we can do from this day forward is create new memories.”