Witness recants original testimony in retrial in 1991 rape-murder of Nicetown woman, 77
In 1993, the testimony of Nicetown teenager Shawn Nixon helped convict Anthony Wright for the rape and murder of 77-year-old neighbor Louise Talley.
In 1993, the testimony of Nicetown teenager Shawn Nixon helped convict Anthony Wright for the rape and murder of 77-year-old neighbor Louise Talley.
That was before social media and no-snitch culture saturated Philadelphia's neighborhoods.
On Thursday, Nixon, now 41, again went before a Common Pleas Court jury for Wright's retrial in Talley's Oct. 19, 1991, slaying. This time, he said he had no memory of Talley, her death, his interview by police, or trial testimony in which he said he saw Wright enter Talley's house the night before she was killed.
For more than an hour, Assistant District Attorney Carlos Vega questioned Nixon about his prior statements. Vega read the statements and Nixon's 1993 trial testimony verbatim, asking the witness after each question and answer if that was what he said.
"I don't recall," Nixon said, in what became a repetitive monotone reply.
Vega's sarcasm grew until at one point he asked Nixon: "Have you had some kind of head injury that makes it impossible for you to recall?"
"I was 16 years old," Nixon shot back. "A lot of stuff happened in my life between now and then."
In 1993, Wright, now 44, was convicted of Talley's rape and murder, and sentenced to life in prison.
But in 2013, his legal team persuaded a judge to retest physical evidence from the crime using contemporary DNA analysis.
The tests proved that Wright was not the source of sperm found inside Talley's body. Instead, the DNA matched a sample from Ronnie Byrd, an ex-Philadelphia crack dealer who died in a South Carolina prison in 2013 at 62.
The District Attorney's Office agreed to vacate Wright's conviction and retry him. But in two days of testimony, Vega and co-prosecutor Bridget Kirn have focused on the prosecution case from 1993.
In her opening to the jury on Wednesday, Kirn did not mention Byrd or DNA, and said Wright would be proved guilty through his 1991 confession to the crime - Wright says it was coerced - and the testimony of Nixon and two other witnesses.
Those two other witnesses could also prove problematic for the jury: Both are dead.
At the 1993 trial, Roland St. James, 44, and roommate John "Buddy" Richardson, 36, testified that Wright tried to get them to help loot Talley's house.
On Thursday, the jury heard the transcript of Richardson's June 1, 1993, testimony.
According to Richardson's testimony, Wright approached him the night before the slaying and asked him to be lookout while he took some televisions out of Talley's house in the 3900 block of Nice Street.
Richardson testified that Wright said he "needs some money" and added that "if I go into there myself and anything happens, I'm going to have to kill her."
Wright has denied knowing St. James, Richardson, or Byrd. His lawyers say police initially considered St. James a suspect in Talley's rape and murder because he tried to sell Talley's 19-inch color television the next day.
St. James operated a crack house on Bott Street that backed up to Talley's house. Both men also were associates of Byrd's, says the defense, and had reason to incriminate someone else in Talley's killing.
In 1993, Richardson testified that he left the block after rejecting Wright's request. The next morning, he said, he returned to the Bott Street house he shared with St. James, and saw two TV sets and a bloodstained T-shirt.
Richardson testified that St. James told him to get rid of the T-shirt, and he put it in a trash bin down the street.
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