A Philly man will be freed from prison after 27 years as his murder case is officially tossed out

Philadelphia prosecutors on Thursday dropped all charges against Eddie Ramirez, whose 1997 murder conviction was overturned earlier this month due to issues including exculpatory DNA evidence, undisclosed police notes from the case file, and disavowed witness testimony.

Ramirez, 47, had always maintained his innocence in the killing of Joyce Dennis, a laundromat employee who was beaten to death during a robbery in Northeast Philadelphia nearly 29 years ago. And although the District Attorney’s Office declined to fully endorse that assertion, prosecutors, in their written filings, nonetheless said they no longer had confidence in his second-degree murder conviction — and did not believe they had enough evidence to try him again.

That decision, approved by Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio, means District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office over the last six years has helped to secure more than 40 murder exonerations — cases in which convictions were overturned and all charges were ultimately dropped.

Ramirez’s relatives and supporters broke into cheers and applause as the decision was made official. He was released from prison late Thursday, his lawyers said.

Nilam Sanghvi, legal director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and one of his lawyers, said afterward that the case was “one of the hardest fought battles” the organization had taken on because it took years to convince others that there were troubling issues with the case.

“Finally, people started to see the problems,” she said.

Krasner, speaking outside the courthouse afterward, took the unusual step of going further than his office’s written filings, saying that he believed Ramirez was “likely innocent,” and adding that “the person who committed this heinous crime got away with it.”

“We have a case where the murder weapon, an object that was used to wipe it, and the actual fingernails of the murder victim all contain evidence that is DNA and that rules out [Ramirez],” Krasner said. “We have to follow the truth.”

The trial prosecutor, Mark Gilson, saw it differently.

Gilson, whom Krasner fired after taking office in 2018, said there was “overwhelming” evidence that Ramirez had committed the crime — including testimony from a co-conspirator who implicated himself and Ramirez and later pleaded guilty. And Gilson said the lack of Ramirez’s DNA did not preclude a variety of explanations, such as Ramirez having worn gloves during the assault.

He called the exoneration “jailbreak by affidavit,” and said he believed Krasner had an “agenda-driven” administration that was intent on overturning Ramirez’s conviction in an attempt to continue freeing people from prison — something he said was demonstrated by the fact that Krasner said Ramirez was likely innocent even though his office’s written pleadings had not.

“They had already reached their conclusion,” said Gilson, who added that prosecutors did not interview him to discuss the case before moving to dismiss it.

Ramirez’s relatives, meanwhile, were elated by the news. They broke into applause after DiClaudio officially set Ramirez on his path toward freedom. His mother, Maria, said her son was “the best guy,” a lovable and caring son and friend.

And his sister, Sue, said: “I feel like I can breathe again. What our family went through, it’s like holding your breath. It’s like being underwater.”

The crime for which Ramirez was convicted was the fatal beating of Dennis on Feb. 20, 1995. Prosecutors gave this account in court documents:

Dennis was found dead early in the morning in the back office of a laundromat where she worked. About $1,100 was missing, and a bloody metal pipe was next to her body.

Still, no physical evidence pointed to any suspects. And after a yearlong investigation, the case went cold.

Then, in the spring of 1996, newly assigned detectives came to believe that Ramirez, then 18, and another teen, Billy Weihe, had committed the crime together. The investigation was built largely on witness testimony following a series of interviews of neighbors, laundromat employees, and friends of the teens.

Weihe also spoke to police several times and implicated himself and Ramirez. He said he served as a lookout, and later pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and spent five years behind bars.

Weihe testified at Ramirez’s trial, as did several other witnesses, some of whom said Ramirez told them he’d committed the murder. The District Attorney’s Office sought the death penalty.

Ramirez’s trial lawyer sought to discredit those accounts as unreliable, and said no physical or other evidence connected Ramirez to the crime.

The jury deliberated for more than two days before convicting him of second-degree murder. The verdict spared him the possibility of execution, but he received an automatic life sentence.

In the years since, however, nearly every witness has gone on to recant the testimony, prosecutors said, and some said they were coerced by police.

Ramirez’s lawyers in 2019 also commissioned DNA testing on the metal pipe and a fleece found at the bloody scene, and said none of the DNA on them belonged to Ramirez.

Then, last year, prosecutors said, lawyers who reviewed Ramirez’s case file found nearly a dozen pieces of evidence that had been improperly withheld from his trial lawyers — including police notes that pointed to another potential suspect, and records of interviews with witnesses that were never turned over.

“Suppressed evidence directly supporting Ramirez’s trial defense, calling the witness’ reliability into question, and suggesting alternative suspects undermines confidence in the jury’s guilty verdict,” prosecutors wrote.

Gilson, the trial prosecutor, disagreed with that assessment, saying he believed anything that wasn’t turned over was immaterial to the case and wouldn’t have changed the outcome. He also said that if Krasner’s office believed differently, it should have done more to prove that — such as by seeking to question the alternative suspects, or checking to see whether the tips in the files were anything other than dead ends that police had disregarded as fruitless.

“You need to bring those witnesses in,” he said. “They [typically] don’t have admissible value.”

One witness who did not recant was Weihe, the teen who said he acted as Ramirez’s lookout and served prison time after pleading guilty.

Krasner, when asked whether he still believed that Weihe was involved even though he believes Ramirez is likely innocent, said Weihe “certainly was involved in blaming the defendant. He certainly was involved in testifying to actions by [Ramirez] that are inconsistent with what the DNA evidence shows. ... I think any proper reopening of the investigation involves answering, more fully, questions like that.”

Assistant District Attorney David Napiorski said he believed the office needed to apologize to the victim’s family “for two decades of misleadings and untruths in this case.” And he said that Dennis’ relatives, who did not attend court Thursday, “feel very uneasy about the whole situation.”

“I can’t say that they like it,” he said. “They are obviously traumatized and in pain.”

Ramirez’s family said they were simply looking forward to getting their loved one home after nearly three decades away. His sister said she wanted to take him to Walt Disney World.

His mother, however, expressed a more modest goal.

“He wants chicken cutlets when he comes out,” she said. “And that’s what he’s going to get.”