Prosecutors drop case against C.J. Rice, subject of Jake Tapper cover story in The Atlantic

Prosecutors will not seek a new trial for C.J. Rice, a South Philadelphia man whose 2013 conviction on four counts of attempted murder was overturned last year, they told a judge during a minutes-long hearing Monday.

There was no contention between the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and Rice’s defense team when prosecutors said at the Common Pleas Court hearing that they would not continue to prosecute Rice, essentially exonerating him.

The decision brings Rice’s case, which had resulted in a 30- to 60-year prison sentence, to a close, 12 years after he was incarcerated, most recently at State Correctional Institution Chester in Delaware County. A federal court ordered in November that Rice, who petitioned that his conviction was unlawful, be released from custody or retried within 180 days.

The case garnered national attention when CNN anchor Jake Tapper, a Philadelphia native, wrote an article in The Atlantic in November 2022 and called Rice’s initial defense “dangerously incompetent.”

“It’s just great to see justice finally done in this case,” Tapper told The Inquirer on Monday. “I know the district attorney gets criticized for all sorts of things, but having an office that is willing to listen to reason and evidence — even if that means overturning a conviction — is no small thing.”

Tapper learned of the case from his father, Philadelphia doctor Theodore Tapper, who had treated Rice for gunshot wounds in the days before the Sept. 25, 2011, shooting in South Philadelphia that left four people wounded, and said that Rice would have been physically unable to commit the crime due to his injuries.

» READ MORE: Jake Tapper’s Atlantic cover story deals with a South Philly man’s conviction for attempted murder

Both Tappers attended Monday’s hearing, alongside members of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and the Exoneration Project, legal groups that work to exonerate people wrongly convicted of crimes.

”We’re overjoyed,” said Karl Schwartz, a Philadelphia attorney whose firm took Rice’s case as it weaved through the appeals process. “We’re incredibly relieved for C.J. ... We’re also dismayed that an innocent guy had to spend so long a period of time in prison. When you have to fix it at the tail end, that’s not how the process is supposed to work.”

District Attorney Larry Krasner said at a news conference that Rice’s conviction came at a time when previous administrations had a “culture that is all about winning, and only vaguely about justice,” and he highlighted his office’s commitment to reviewing cases of people who may be serving jail time for crimes they did not commit.

Krasner said the case against Rice had “no integrity,” but stopped short of saying with complete confidence that Rice was innocent.

Schwartz and other members of the defense team broke the news to Rice over the phone immediately after the hearing. Rice, whose family did not attend the hearing, has been released on bail since December, according to his team.

”We’re just so happy for C.J.,” said Nilam Sanghvi, legal director for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. “It’s just a reminder of what got us here, which is eyewitness misidentification, poor legal assistance, prosecutorial overreach. So I hope we start learning from some of these lessons.”

Much of the doubt surrounding Rice’s 2013 conviction during a jury trial rests on the conduct of Rice’s court-appointed attorney, Sandjai Weaver.

Tapper’s Atlantic article suggested that Weaver, who died in 2019, had made a number of missteps, failing to introduce Rice’s full hospital records, collect alibi statements, and obtain location data from Rice’s cell phone.

The attorney was likely overworked and underpaid, people involved in the case agree.

Because of those conditions, Tapper said, “there is little incentive for somebody to dive in and get their hands dirty, and try to figure out if the client is not guilty, and if so, the best way to prove that in a court of law.”

“There are those who say that that low compensation is not a coincidence,” Tapper said. “It’s a feature, not a bug, that they don’t want a system where people who can’t afford good attorneys are able to have adequate counsel.”

Krasner, who has served as a court-appointed defense attorney on homicide cases, told reporters the job was a “constant fight for adequate funding.”

Rice reached out to the elder Tapper in 2016 to request medical records that detailed the injuries to his pelvis from a separate shooting on Sept. 3, 2011 — evidence that was never introduced in his trial. That conversation led to the doctor assisting Rice in securing a legal team and getting the journalist Tapper interested in the story, according to Jake Tapper’s CNN article published Monday.

Krasner’s office began reviewing the case after Rice filed his most recent habeas corpus petition. The office conceded he was entitled to relief before a federal court vacated his conviction last year. Assistant District Attorney Bill Fritze presented to reporters several factors from their findings that cast doubt on Rice’s conviction.

For one, eyewitness testimony came down to a single witness who had misidentified Rice’s hairstyle to police, according to Fritze. Meanwhile, a 911 phone call placed after the shooting — and not introduced as evidence by Rice’s defense — documented another individual’s description of the suspect that conflicted with the eyewitnesses testimony, according to Fritze.

There was no physical evidence linking Rice to the shooting. Tapper, the doctor, testified that given Rice’s injuries from a shooting five days beforehand, he likely wouldn’t have been able to ”walk standing up straight, let alone run with any degree of speed.”

» READ MORE: South Philly man convicted of attempted murder could soon be freed after Jake Tapper cover story in The Atlantic

Theodore Tapper, exiting the Criminal Justice Center, told reporters that he’d just spoken to Rice and that he “had a big smile on his face over the phone.”

”Finally, the system adjudicated him to be innocent,” the physician said. “It should never have happened. He was no different than the five or six of us standing around here now. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, had the wrong skin color, and grew up the way he grew up — that’s why he was locked up for 12 years.”

Jake Tapper will air an exclusive sit-down interview with Rice on CNN’s The Whole Story Sunday evening.

“Once you see how the system can be so unjust, you can’t unsee it,” Tapper said.