More witnesses recant statements in retrial in 1991 rape-murder of Nicetown woman, 77
They said they were friends as teenagers in Nicetown in the early '90s and have remained so since. And on Friday, Gregory Alston and Antonio Johnson followed the example that Shawn Nixon had set the day before: recanting 1991 statements that were key evidence that helped convict Anthony Wright of the rape and murder of his 77-year-old neighbor, Louise Talley.
They said they were friends as teenagers in Nicetown in the early '90s and have remained so since.
And on Friday, Gregory Alston and Antonio Johnson followed the example that Shawn Nixon had set the day before: recanting 1991 statements that were key evidence that helped convict Anthony Wright of the rape and murder of his 77-year-old neighbor, Louise Talley.
"I don't recall saying that," Alston, now 39, repeated to each question from Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega as he read aloud his testimony from Wright's 1993 trial.
Johnson, 41, never testified in Wright's 1993 trial, and now maintains that his statement to homicide detectives on the day after Talley was found dead on Oct. 19, 1991, never happened and that the signatures on each page of the statement were not his.
"I never went to the police station at all," Johnson testified Friday.
Wright, now 44, served 21 years of a life sentence for Talley's slaying before the District Attorney's Office agreed to a new trial after new DNA testing proved that Wright was not the source of sperm found in Talley's body.
Instead, the DNA in the sperm samples matched one from Ronnie Byrd, an ex-Philadelphia crack dealer who died in a South Carolina prison in 2013 at 62.
Despite the DNA evidence, Assistant District Attorney Bridget Kirn told the jury in her opening statement Wednesday that the evidence would prove that Wright sexually assaulted Talley and then stabbed her to death in her house in the 3900 block of Nice Street.
Testimony resumes Monday before a Common Pleas Court jury of seven women and five men in the courtroom of Judge Sandy L.V. Byrd.
Nixon, Alston, and Johnson were brought in for questioning in the hours after Talley's killing and told similar stories about seeing Wright pacing the sidewalk in front of Talley's house about 10 p.m. the night before she was killed.
The three said they were hanging out on the corner of Nice and Kerbaugh Street. Nixon and Alston, who testified at Wright's trial, said they saw Wright enter Talley's house. Johnson said he saw Wright walk back and forth before the house four times, but he said he left the block before Wright allegedly went inside.
Each of the three now says he has no memory of talking to the police or testifying at Wright's trial. Questioned by Vega, each denied sustaining any brain trauma that would have caused loss of memory. They also denied coordinating their testimony in the current trial during three days this week when they were waiting outside the courtroom to testify.
Questioned by Wright's attorney, Samuel W. Silver, Alston and Johnson denied that they had been pressured to change their testimony.
At one point, while Silver pressed him about any outside pressure, Alston appeared to lose his temper and said, "Yes, a police officer told me a long time ago that if I didn't testify, he was going to kill my mom."
Vega pounced, asking Alston how he could recall a threat against his mother but could not remember Talley's death or trial testimony.
"I remember a police officer but I don't remember the case," Alston snapped back. "I've been threatened my whole life."
Vega pressed on, and Alston said he could not remember the threatening officer's name or which case the threat involved. "You can't make me remember," Alston told the prosecutor.
Also Friday, the jury heard a reading of the 1993 trial testimony of Roland St. James, 44, who died after the 1993 trial.
According to the 1993 testimony, St. James, a sometime crack dealer who squatted in an abandoned house on Bott Street that backed up to Talley's house, was considered the prime suspect in her death.
St. James, however, denied any role in the crime except to let Wright store two television sets and a radio in his crack house until they could be sold.
St. James told police that Wright told him he had "stabbed a woman to death" or beaten a woman. St. James only testified about the alleged comment after he was prodded during extensive cross-examination by Wright's then-lawyer.
Wright has denied knowing St. James or Ronnie Byrd, and his lawyers say St. James was trying to deflect police inquiries from his friend Byrd - the DNA-identified rapist - onto Wright.
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