A Philly exoneree’s lawsuit says police shot him, then framed him to cover up their misconduct

For nearly 20 years, the official account of what happened in a dark alley behind St. Agnes Hospital in South Philadelphia rested largely on the word of city police officers.

In police paperwork, in court documents, and ultimately at a trial for Termaine Hicks, the officers, most prominently Martin Vinson, painted a picture of a troubling scene, saying they’d responded to a report of a rape in the loading dock, then arrived to find Hicks standing over a woman on the ground.

Vinson said that when he tried to intervene, Hicks reached for a gun in his jacket pocket and lunged toward him, prompting Vinson to shoot Hicks three times.

Hicks, who survived, maintained that he was a Good Samaritan in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that some of the allegations against him — including that he had a gun — were simply not true. But jurors believed the police. In 2002, Hicks was convicted of both the rape and weapons charges, and a judge sentenced him to up to 25 years behind bars.

In 2020, that official account began to unravel. The District Attorney’s Office said new evidence showed that Hicks had been shot in the back — not the front, as Vinson had said — and that the officer’s testimony was riddled with “factual inaccuracies, discrepancies, and inconsistencies.”

Prosecutors said those issues “appear[ed] to stem from” Vinson’s desire to justify his decision to shoot. Hicks was exonerated and released from prison after 19 years.

On Tuesday, Hicks filed a civil lawsuit against Vinson, 10 other officers, and the city, saying Vinson not only shot Hicks but also worked with colleagues to frame and imprison him to avoid accountability.

His lawyers called the situation an “unimaginable nightmare.”

“This is a case about an unarmed Black man being shot without justification, and a number of officers closing ranks, looking the other way, and in this instance joining in on the misconduct,” said Amelia Green, one of Hicks’ attorneys. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

The Police Department declined to comment Tuesday on the suit, as did the police officers’ union.

The city also declined to comment. In recent years, the city’s Law Department has agreed to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to settle lawsuits connected to wrongful convictions and police misconduct, and more suits remain pending.

In Hicks’ case, six of the 11 officers named in the lawsuit are still on the force, the department said. Three of them — Vinson, Sgt. Dennis Zungolo, and Officer Robert Ellis — had been reassigned in December 2020 amid an Internal Affairs investigation after Hicks’ conviction was overturned.

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a Police Department spokesperson, said Tuesday that all three officers have since been returned to full duty and were not disciplined.

Attempts to reach them for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Although the lawsuit effectively accuses some officers of criminal wrongdoing — including manufacturing evidence and lying under oath — it was not clear whether any of the officers could be charged. Many of the alleged misdeeds occurred nearly two decades ago, and Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations for many relevant crimes, such as perjury, is five years.

The District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday declined to comment.

The incident began around 5 a.m. on Nov. 27, 2001, when a man pistol-whipped a woman near 15th and Mifflin Streets, then dragged her into an alley behind St. Agnes Hospital and sexually assaulted her.

Neighbors called 911 after hearing the woman’s screams. According to Hicks’ lawsuit, he had just walked his brother to a nearby bus stop and heard the victim’s cries for help, so he headed toward the alley.

Hicks found the victim — whom the suit does not name — on the ground, bloodied and with her pants down. By the time he tried to pull his cell phone out of his jacket pocket, the suit says, Vinson and Zungolo had arrived and told him to put his hands up.

Before he could do so, the suit says, Vinson shot Hicks three times in the back.

Vinson later said Hicks had reached for a gun before lunging toward him, which is why he fired the shots. He repeated those assertions as Hicks’ prosecution proceeded through court.

But prosecutors in 2020 said new forensic evidence showed Vinson’s shots had entered Hicks’ back, contradicting the officer’s testimony.

And the DA’s Office also questioned other aspects of the officers’ version of events, including how they were able to recover a blood-soaked gun from inside Hicks’ jacket pocket even though the pockets themselves were found to be clean.

Hicks’ suit offers a theory, accusing Vinson and his colleagues of quickly recognizing that the shooting was unjustified and working to concoct a cover story that would shift blame to Hicks. The suit says Hicks did not own a gun, and it accuses the officers of planting a .38-caliber handgun on him at the scene. The gun was registered to another police officer, though Green, Hicks’ lawyer, said it was unclear how the officers would have had access to that gun at the crime scene.

The suit also said officers went on to provide false testimony tying Hicks to the rape, with Vinson telling jurors he’d seen Hicks committing the assault. The victim said she was not able to identify her attacker, making police witnesses the key piece of evidence against Hicks in that crime.

The DA’s Office said in 2020 that it no longer had faith in Vinson’s testimony about anything that happened in the moments before the shooting.

Green said she believed Hicks’ case was an example of a larger pattern of police misconduct in Philadelphia. She previously represented Anthony Wright, who in 2018 settled a lawsuit against the city for nearly $10 million over his wrongful conviction for rape and murder, a case that was also dogged by allegations of widespread police misconduct.

As for Hicks, she said: “He’s never going to get back what he lost. But in the last year since he’s been released, he’s been focusing on moving forward with his life.”

Staff writer Dylan Purcell contributed to this article.