Photos: Families\Video Screenshot
Abovr photo: Samuel Grasty, Derrick Chappell, and Morton Johnson (Image: Courtesy of the families)
Morton Johnson has spent more than half his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. In fact, DNA evidence excluded him before his trial even began — but he was still wrongly convicted when he was just 20 alongside his cousin, Sam Grasty, and their friend Derrick Chappell.
The young men — who were all between the ages of 15 and 20 at the time of the crime — were charged for the murder of 70-year-old Henrietta Nickens in Chester, Pennsylvania despite no physical evidence tying them to the crime. They have missed out on the entirety of their young adulthood as a result of grave miscarriages of justice.
Now, 22 years later, Morton is still fighting for his freedom. The Innocence Project filed a motion to vacate his convictions for the 1997 crime last year. A hearing on new evidence in his case began on July 25, 2023, and will continue this month.
Ms. Nickens was found dead in her home, the obvious victim of a rape and robbery. Unable to solve the case, detectives turned their investigation to 20-year-old Sam, Morton’s cousin, who had dated Ms. Nickens’ granddaughter and lived nearby. Though Morton lived several miles away, he would often visit Sam along with Derrick and another friend Richard McElwee. Soon, all four men became the focus of the investigation.
No physical evidence connected any of them to the murder, but during a coercive interrogation, detectives used intimidation and leading questions to pressure then-15-year-old Richard, who has an intellectual disability, into implicating himself and his friends in the crime.
Richard initially maintained his innocence for hours of questioning, but he was facing significant prison time for unrelated drug charges and also a life sentence if convicted for Ms. Nickens’ murder. He ultimately gave police a statement that he acted as a lookout. In exchange for his testimony implicating Morton, Sam, and Derrick, he received a shortened sentence. Although the details and time of the crime in his statement did not match the facts, law enforcement and prosecutors built their case around the statement.
Morton, Sam, and Derrick were all sentenced to life in prison, but they’ve never given up hope.
The Innocence Project — along with Centurion and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project who represent Sam and Derrick, respectively — have been fighting to free the men and secured new, advanced DNA testing of crime scene evidence. The testing was completed in 2022 and found that semen from the victim’s body, DNA from a stain on a green XXXL jacket that was left at the crime scene during the crime, and a semen stain on her blood-stained bedding all matched one unknown man and excluded Morton, Sam, and Derrick.
“We’re not asking a lot, we’re just asking for justice,” Morton said.
The Innocence Project Team
