Termaine Joseph Hicks has been freed after spending 19 years in prison because two police officers wrongly claimed he had raped a woman and then shot at him. This week, after a review of his case, his conviction was overturned by the Conviction Integrity Unit in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.
The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit sided with Joseph Hicks and his lawyers, and Common Pleas Court Judge Tracy Brandeis-Roman vacated his conviction on Wednesday.
“I am quite cognizant of the pain and the trauma of the victim, and then more pain in realizing that the wrong person was convicted,” Brandeis-Roman said Wednesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “I do feel that, one case at a time, this system is being improved.”
Termaine Joseph Hicks, now 45, was near the St. Agnes Hospital in South Philadelphia in the early hours of Nov. 27, 2001 when he heard a woman screaming. She was walking to an early shift at a Dunkin’ Donuts when she was pistol-whipped and dragged into an alley by a man who raped her.
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Hicks, who was working at the time as a Popeye’s assistant manager ran to the alley to help. The rapist, startled by headlights from a delivery van nearby, ran off and Hicks says that is when he arrived. But when cops Marvin Vinson and Dennis Zungolo arrived second later, they presumed he had attacked the woman and shot at him.
They then claimed that he had opened fire on them and that they shot him in self-defense.
Joseph Hicks was convicted of the sexual assault even though the woman could not identify her attacker at trial and had suffered a head injury and of shooting the police officers and was sentenced to 25 years behind bars.
False testimony
The head of the Conviction Integrity Unit unit said that ‘false testimony’ was to blame for it. ‘False testimony was used, and I believe it’s impossible to say that did not contribute to the conviction,’ CIU chief Patricia Cummings said.
Hicks was released from a state prison outside Philadelphia on Wednesday. “I feel 100 pounds lighter,” he told the Inquirer. “It’s unfortunate and sad that it took how long it took for me to clear my name.”
His attorneys celebrated the exoneration Wednesday, noting that Joseph Hicks, who was the father of a 5-year-old boy when he was incarcerated, would be able to meet his 2-year-old grandson for the first time.
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