D.A. takes another shot at overturned murder conviction from 1993

Two years after a judge reversed Anthony Wright's conviction in the 1991 rape and murder of a 77-year-old Nicetown woman in her own bedroom, the now-44-year-old defendant again faces trial.

Wright's 1993 conviction and life sentence were overturned after new DNA tests showed that the sperm found in the victim's body belonged to Ronnie Byrd, a crackhead who frequented a home that abutted Louise Talley's row on the 3900 block of Nice Street. Byrd, however, died in a South Carolina prison in 2013 at age 62.

Nevertheless, on Monday Wright will again be tried in her murder.

This time, the District Attorney's Office has a different theory for what happened: Wright didn't act alone. But he was in the home when Byrd assaulted Talley, and when she was stabbed 10 times.

Assistant District Attorney Bridget Kirn declined to comment before trial.

Like Kirn, Wright's lawyers - Peter Neufeld, codirector of the Innocence Project at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School in New York, and senior staff attorney Nina Morrison - also declined to comment.

They are, however, working to make sure the retrial doesn't happen. They will ask Common Pleas Court Judge Sandy L.V. Byrd to throw out the remaining evidence against Wright.

In a series of pretrial filings, Wright's lawyers have argued that the remaining evidence should be tossed because it has been tainted by improper police conduct. And, witnesses have died since the 1993 trial.

David Rudovsky, a veteran Center City criminal defense lawyer and civil rights expert, agreed.

"I think it's almost impossible to conceive how they can prosecute [Wright] now," he said in an interview.

Rudovsky also cited the fact that the Police Department's own DNA analysts have confirmed the findings of Wright's forensic experts.

Joining Neufeld and Morrison when trial begins Monday will be Samuel Silver and Rebecca Lacher of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis L.L.P., both are volunteering their services.

The challenged prosecution evidence includes:

Detectives testified that Wright was brought in for questioning at 1:45 p.m. on Oct. 20, 1991, the day after Talley's body was found. The then-20-year-old Wright waived his Miranda rights at 2:01 p.m., and gave a complete statement 14 minutes later.

Wright, however, recanted the confession even before trial, contending he was threatened and forced to initial the nine-page statement without reading it. The defense memo states Wright didn't finish his statement until about 6 p.m. - a four-hour lag.

His lawyers argue that Wright had just one prior arrest, as a 16-year-old in 1988 for assaulting a police officer.

Furthermore, two months before the murder, Wright completed a wilderness-based program for at-risk youths and returned to his mother's home in the 1900 block of Brunner Street, about a mile from Talley's house. During that time he held down a job in construction.

Detectives testified that Wright told them he hid in his bedroom the clothes he had worn when he killed Talley.

Based on Wright's alleged statement, detectives got a search warrant for his mother's house and testified they found the bloodstained clothing: a black Chicago Bulls sweatshirt, a pair of blue jeans with black suede patches, and black Fila sneakers.

Wright maintained that the clothing was not his and he never told detectives that he had hidden them. Wright's mother, who was present for the search, said she did not see police remove the clothing from the house and that they did not give her a property receipt.

According to defense filings, the Police Department's own experts have since confirmed DNA findings that the bloody clothing was not worn by Wright, but by the victim.

The tests could not exclude Wright as the source of a small sample of "touch DNA" on the jean's waistband but Wright's lawyers say that likely occurred when Wright was asked to pick up the jeans during the 1993 trial.

Wright's lawyers are also asking the judge to bar use of the clothing at trial because the search warrant was based on information from the now-contested confession.

The prosecution in 1993 presented Roland St. James, 44, and roommate John "Buddy" Richardson, 36, who testified that Wright tried to convince them to help him loot Talley's house of valuables. St. James also said Wright told him he had killed a woman.

Both men have since died and Wright's lawyers argue that transcripts of the men's testimony should not be used in the retrial because the testimony has been undermined by the new DNA evidence and they have no way to confront and cross-examine the men about the discrepancies.

Wright has denied knowing either man, or Byrd, and defense lawyers argue that it's illogical that a 20-year-old with no adult criminal record would associate with veteran criminals twice his age.

The defense pretrial memorandum also says its investigators have since learned that St. James was initially a suspect in Talley's rape and murder and operated a crack house on Bott Street, which backed up to Talley's house.

Both men were also associates of Byrd's, the defense filings continues, and had reason to incriminate someone else in Talley's rape and murder.

To believe Wright's confession is true, the defense filing continues, means believing that a 20-year-old who had never been in state prison "not only failed to offer Mr. Byrd's name when voluntarily 'confessing' to the crime in great detail, but continued to remain silent about the identity of this crack-addicted co-perpetrator twice his age, with whom he had no prior ties whatsoever, throughout more than two years of pretrial detention and a capital murder trial . . . and two decades of imprisonment."

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