Another Philly murder case was tossed for its connections to disgraced ex-homicide detective Philip Nordo

A Philadelphia judge on Thursday ruled that a murder conviction in which two men had received life sentences should be tossed out due to its connections to disgraced former homicide detective Philip Nordo — a decision that came nearly two years after prosecutors agreed that Nordo’s misconduct had tainted the case beyond repair.

Curtis Kingwood and Faheem Davis had maintained their innocence since their arrests more than a decade ago. And as they continued to fight their appeals before a series of judges, troubling allegations emerged about Nordo’s actions in the case — including an assertion by Kingwood that Nordo, who has since been convicted of sexually assaulting witnesses and informants, had groped him in an interrogation room before coercing him to sign a false confession after 43 hours of detention.

Kingwood had told his lawyer about Nordo’s alleged abuse years ago, but the lawyer, now deceased, didn’t believe it, court documents say. But the alleged groping was just one issue undermining the conviction, the judge ruled.

Prosecutors also said Nordo had helped secure $20,000 in reward money for an informant who testified in two separate murder trials on the same day — including against Kingwood and Davis. But the witness’ payment and double-booking was never disclosed to lawyers for Kingwood or Davis, even though those facts could have been key elements in attacking his credibility.

And prosecutors said one of Nordo’s colleagues, Detective Ohmarr Jenkins, gave “false testimony” while implicating Kingwood and seeking to convince a judge that Kingwood’s purported confession was credible.

The District Attorney’s Office said in 2021 that it had “no confidence” in the convictions of Kingwood or Davis, calling their continued incarceration an “ongoing miscarriage of justice.”

Still, judges over the years had delayed issuing a ruling. Common Pleas Court Judge Linda Carpenter, who for years oversaw the appeals, first ordered evidentiary hearings and then did not issue a decision. The matter was transferred this spring to her colleague, Scott DiClaudio, who said Thursday that it was clear to him that Nordo’s misconduct had a “significant” impact on the investigation, and that there was little evidence left tying Kingwood or Davis to the crime.

“It’s obvious to me that there would be scant evidence remaining,” DiClaudio said.

After tossing out the conviction, he agreed to let prosecutors drop all remaining charges. Kingwood was released Thursday afternoon. (Davis will remain incarcerated for a separate robbery conviction.) Both men dipped their heads as DiClaudio issued his ruling, and their families and supporters hugged and expressed relief afterward.

“I’m overjoyed and also exhausted,” said Kingwood’s brother, Tyrice Harvey, 31.

Kingwood “is completely innocent in this case, and was a victim of Nordo and the court system,” said his lawyer Jennifer Merrigan.

Davis’ lawyer, Teri Himebaugh, called the case emblematic of “deeply troubling, systemic” problems in homicide investigations, many of which she has worked to appeal.

Relatives of the victim in the case, meanwhile, expressed mixed emotions to DiClaudio — saying they didn’t want anyone imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit, but were unsure who would be left to fight for their deceased loved one, Christopher Lee.

“Who’s fighting for Chris?” asked his mother, Lorraine Sutton.

Lee’s sister, Stevnita Johnson, said to Kingwood and Davis: “If y’all didn’t do it, I don’t want you in jail.” And afterward, she said of the case: “All I can do is pray on it.”

The case marks at least the 15th time a conviction tied to Nordo has been overturned, according to Jane Roh, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office. Ten are considered exonerations — instances in which a conviction is overturned and charges dropped — while three other convictions were overturned and resulted in guilty pleas to lesser charges, and two more await retrials.

Nordo spent two decades on the force and was one of the city’s most decorated homicide detectives. But he was convicted last year of rape, sexual assault, official oppression, and related crimes for forcing male witnesses or suspects into encounters that ranged from groping at Police Headquarters to unwanted sex in a Chinatown hotel room.

Since Nordo’s 2019 arrest, prosecutors have been assessing the validity of more than 100 convictions he helped build, and they’ve previously thrown cases out over accusations that he sought to sexually abuse witnesses, propositioned suspects, and improperly steered reward money to undeserving informants.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Garmisa said in a statement Thursday that Nordo’s misconduct had caused “incalculable harm to individuals Nordo targeted, the families of murder victims, and the public at-large.”

District Attorney Larry Krasner said: “The Philadelphia criminal legal system continues to unwind wrongful convictions and other injustices tied to former detective Philip Nordo’s outrageous crimes with no immediate end in sight — because too many officials in powerful positions tolerated his corruption for too long.”

The crime for which Kingwood and Davis were convicted was the 2011 fatal shooting of Lee on the 5000 block of Jefferson Street in West Philadelphia.

Lee, along with two other men, had been playing dice on the street when two gunmen approached and opened fire, court documents say. Nordo and Jenkins didn’t have a lead for about a year, but eventually interviewed witnesses who suggested Kingwood was involved.

In 2012, the detectives brought Kingwood in for an interrogation. And after 43 hours — the bulk of that time spent with Nordo — Kingwood signed a confession implicating himself and Davis. His statement was a key piece of evidence used against him throughout the case.

But Kingwood quickly disavowed the statement. And he provided his trial lawyer, James Lammendola, with a startling reason, saying Nordo had sexually assaulted him during the interrogation before intimidating him to sign the confession, court documents say.

In recent years, as the appeals in the case progressed, Davis’ trial lawyer, Daniel Conner, testified at an evidentiary hearing that Lammendola had told him about Kingwood’s claim of abuse, but Lammendola didn’t believe it.

“You wouldn’t expect something like that to happen anywhere in America,” Conner said.

The trial prosecutor, Lorraine Donnelly, also told the DA’s Office after Nordo’s arrest that she recalled feeling uneasy about the way Kingwood was discussing Nordo during a pretrial meeting — repeatedly telling her “Where’s Nordo? He knows what he did. He knows what he did.”

The interaction “made me uncomfortable,” Donnelly later testified. “It didn’t sit right with me.” Garmisa said Thursday that prosecutors now believe Kingwood’s behavior was the equivalent of a “cry for help.”

Before trial, Kingwood had sought to challenge the credibility of his statement in other ways, including by saying it was coerced over nearly two days in custody.

But Jenkins testified that the statement was voluntary, and he omitted all mention of Nordo’s time with Kingwood. Instead, Jenkins attributed the length of the interrogation to the hours he’d spent on a wild goose chase trying to verify the name of an alternate suspect Kingwood had provided. Jenkins said he ultimately concluded that Kingwood had simply made up a name.

Unbeknownst to Kingwood’s trial lawyers, the suspect was, in fact, a real person — and his mug shot was in the detectives’ homicide file.

(Jenkins remains on the force. A department spokesperson did not immediately say whether Jenkins had been — or would be — investigated in connection with his role in the case).

Then there was the issue of the witnesses. Nordo got both of the men who had been playing dice with Lee — Dontay Chestnut and Kenneth Perry — to identify Kingwood and Davis as the shooters using photo arrays. But both of those identifications were made more than a year after the crime — and Nordo had managed to secure $20,000 in reward payments for each of them.

In Perry’s case, the payment came because he’d also agreed to testify at another trial on the same day — in a case that Nordo was also involved in. The payments to Chestnut and Perry were not disclosed before trial.

DiClaudio said the totality of that misconduct — the witness payments, the coerced confession, the undisclosed material undermining Jenkins’ testimony — made the decision “an easier case” for him to overturn.

“Had this come out, [they] might’ve never done a day” in jail, the judge said.

Harvey, Kingwood’s brother, said after the hearing that he was looking forward to having Kingwood home. Kingwood has a 17-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son, Harvey said, and has missed much of their childhoods behind bars.

When asked what Kingwood planned to do with his family when he’s out, Harvey paused, then gave a simple answer.

“Just live,” he said.