Jake Tapper’s Atlantic cover story deals with a South Philly man’s conviction for attempted murder

CNN anchor Jake Tapper has a cover story in The Atlantic that raises questions about the case of C.J. Rice, a South Philadelphia man convicted of four counts of attempted murder in 2013.

But as Tapper, who grew up in Queen Village and Merion and just moved to a primetime slot at CNN, examines in the story, Rice had injuries from a prior shooting that Tapper’s physician father says would have likely made him physically unable to commit the crime. And an overwhelmed and underprepared — or, as Tapper puts it in the story, “dangerously incompetent” — attorney contributed to his conviction.

On Sept. 3, 2011, Rice, then 17, was seriously injured after being shot three times, fracturing his pelvis, in what he told Tapper was a case of mistaken identity. And while in the hospital, he contracted pneumonia.

But Rice was later convicted of a Sept. 25, 2011, shooting in South Philly in which four people, including a 6-year-old, were injured. Rice was not initially identified by victims or witnesses, and no physical evidence tied him to the scene. After police announced him as a suspect, Rice turned himself in to authorities “thinking the matter would be cleared up quickly,” Tapper writes.

It wasn’t. He was sentenced to 30 to 60 years, and is incarcerated at SCI Coal Township in Northumberland County.

But Tapper’s father, Theodore Tapper, who worked as a physician in South Philly for more than four decades and was Rice’s doctor, believes that Rice couldn’t have committed the crime because of the injuries he suffered in the earlier shooting. Theodore Tapper examined Rice’s wounds in the days after he was shot, and testified at Rice’s trial.

“The amount of pain that I saw him with and the inability to stand and get onto and off the table in my office on the 20th of September makes me very dubious as to whether he could walk standing up straight, let along run with any degree of speed, five days after I saw him,” Theodore Tapper said at the trial.

Jake Tapper makes the case that Rice’s conviction, in large part, was due to the incompetency of his attorney, Sandjai Weaver, who died in 2019. At the time of the trial, Weaver had recently filed for bankruptcy.

Needing to pay off debts, Weaver became a court-appointed lawyer, and took on a caseload that left little time for her to familiarize herself with her clients’ cases, or provide “legal representation worthy of the name,” as Tapper puts it.

Tapper argues that Weaver’s performance in court was “constitutionally defective.” He reported that Weaver’s missteps included not introducing Rice’s full hospital records, failing to collect alibi statements or obtain location data from Rice’s cellphone, and not moving to have the case tried in juvenile court.

Rice appealed his case to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, which upheld the initial ruling. The state Supreme Court declined to hear his case. Philadelphia’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which looks for cases with improper convictions or overly harsh sentences, is no longer considering Rice’s case, Tapper reports.

But cases that merit scrutiny are hardly unique, Tapper notes. The Philadelphia unit has exonerated 25 people, and reviewed more than 800 cases as of August, Tapper reports.

“The only unusual thing about Rice’s story is the quirk of fate — his doctor is the father of a journalist — that has gained it any attention at all,” Tapper writes.