Former Philly homicide detective James Pitts was sentenced to at least 2½ years in prison for perjury

A former Philadelphia homicide detective was sentenced Friday to at least 2½ years in prison for fabricating evidence in a 2010 murder investigation and then lying about it on the witness stand — one of only a few instances in city history in which a police investigator accused of misconduct has been imprisoned for his actions.

Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony Kyriakakis said James Pitts “caused extensive, far-reaching harm” to the city and its criminal justice system when he roughed up a murder suspect in 2010 to obtain a false confession, then lied about it at trial three years later to help bolster an otherwise-weak case and secure the man’s life sentence.

Prosecutors no longer believe that the man Pitts helped convict, Obinah Onyiah, had anything to do with the slaying; they helped overturn his conviction in 2021, and he went on to serve as the star witness at Pitts’ trial last summer.

The judge said Pitts’ conduct ensured that Onyiah was subjected to a “massive injustice” — but said it had also caused “immeasurable damage” to the city, eroding trust between citizens and law enforcement.

“Your crimes victimized all of the people of Philadelphia,” he said as he ordered Pitts to be incarcerated for 32 to 46 months.

Pitts, who is now confined to a wheelchair because his lower left leg was amputated due to complications from diabetes, dipped his head and took notes as Kyriakakis delivered his decision. Pitts has long denied Onyiah’s allegations of abuse, and did so again while addressing the judge Friday.

“I didn’t do what they accused me of,” Pitts said. “And I can’t show remorse for something I didn’t do.”

Suspects and witnesses have complained for decades that some Philadelphia detectives, particularly in homicide, have resorted to coercive tactics to bolster weak or spurious cases. But Pitts was one of the first to be convicted of wrongdoing when a jury found him guilty of perjury and obstruction last year.

Philip Nordo, who worked in homicide at the same time as Pitts, was found guilty in 2022 of sexually assaulting witnesses and informants and sentenced to 24½ to 49 years in prison.

Three detectives who worked in homicide in the 1990s, meanwhile — Martin Devlin, Manuel Santiago, and Frank Jastrzembski — are awaiting trial on perjury charges, accused of lying on the witness stand at a 2016 retrial. Each has denied wrongdoing.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Garmisa said that in Pitts’ case, his crimes caused “a mistrust in the system that reverberates beyond this case.”

“The system of justice as a whole is the victim here,” he said.

The trial centered around Pitts’ role in the investigation of the slaying of Northeast Philadelphia jeweler William Glatz in October 2010.

Police began investigating Onyiah after a coconspirator in other robberies he’d committed before that crime called police and named him as a suspect.

After Onyiah was brought to the homicide unit, Pitts interrogated him inside a sergeant’s office. When it was over, the detective said Onyiah had confessed — admitting he took part in the robbery with another man who died at the scene, but saying he hadn’t fired a shot. That description matched actions captured on surveillance footage that detectives had obtained and reviewed before Pitts interrogated Onyiah.

Onyiah was charged with murder but quickly disavowed his statement, and said in recorded jail calls that he’d been coerced.

Onyiah and his trial lawyers sought to have the statement thrown out, telling a judge it was not true and describing the abuse by Pitts.

But that request was denied, in part because Pitts testified — both at a pretrial hearing, and again at the 2013 trial — that he hadn’t abused Onyiah or fabricated his confession.

Onyiah was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

A decade later, the District Attorney’s Office began reinvestigating Onyiah’s conviction. Prosecutors ultimately concluded that Onyiah — who stands 6-foot-3 — was several inches taller than the perpetrator depicted on surveillance video.

A judge later agreed that Onyiah’s conviction should be overturned, and he was freed from prison after prosecutors agreed to drop all charges.

At Pitts’ trial last year, Onyiah said that as Pitts interrogated him, the detective struck him in the chest and shoved his head between his legs while forcing him to confess. He said the false confession led him to spend more than a decade of his life in prison.

Pitts, meanwhile, insisted that he’d never touched Onyiah, and said his testimony as the case wound through the courts was truthful.

For years before his 2022 arrest, Pitts had been the subject of lawsuits, complaints, and allegations of abuse, few of which seemed to derail his two-decade career as a detective.

Kyriakakis, the judge who sentenced Pitts, said the detective’s conduct in Onyiah’s case, at least, was a “betrayal of trust,” and added: “The effectiveness of [the] criminal justice system suffers as a result.”