Former death row inmate exonerated and freed after nearly 30 years

A 54-year-old Philadelphia man who spent nearly 30 years in prison was exonerated and freed this week.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office dropped all charges Wednesday against Daniel Gwynn and said that he had been wrongfully convicted of murdering a woman named Marsha Smith in 1994.

Gwynn, who had maintained his innocence since his conviction and death sentence, was ordered by a judge to be released from a state prison on Wednesday, according to the D.A.’s Office, which announced the exoneration in a statement.

“It’s good to be out,” Gwynn told local reporters on Wednesday evening after leaving prison, smiling as he appeared between his lawyers. “I’m going to go home and have a good meal with my family.”

Gwynn’s case is among dozens that Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has sought to revisit; 41 wrongfully convicted people have been exonerated under his administration, according to his office.

Gwynn’s exoneration “exemplifies an era of inexact and, at times corrupt, policing and prosecution that has broken trust with our communities to this day,” Krasner said in the statement.

Smith was killed in an intentionally set fire on Nov. 20, 1994, in West Philadelphia. Authorities now say there was another “plausible” suspect in Smith’s murder, a man who was on trial for a different homicide at the time of Smith’s killing. Gwynn’s trial relied on the testimony of two witnesses who had already testified against the other man and had been threatened by him not to do so again.

Krasner’s office said police and prosecutors at the time relied on that testimony and on a confession they had talked Gwynn into making.

The District Attorney’s Office said Gwynn’s rights had been violated at his trial and that police and prosecutors had failed to turn over case files to Gwynn, including key information about the possible alternate suspect.

The other suspect, according to Krasner’s office, made threats to coerce the witnesses not to testify against him in Gwynn’s trial. (That man, who authorities did not identify, was convicted of the other murder and is serving life in prison.)

Gwynn also didn’t appear in a photo lineup police said they used to identify him, and he was never shown the photo arrays – in fact, the District Attorney’s Office falsely maintained for decades that they did not exist – until the current administration handed over the case files.

The files helped Gwynn raise the new claims that this week resulted in his freedom. He had spent years fighting for his innocence after being sentenced to death row, and in December 2020, he had been resentenced to life without parole. After that, his lawyers got access to the case files.

“The wrongful conviction of Daniel Gwynn, and his unjust imprisonment for nearly three decades, is a cautionary tale of tunnel vision in policing and prosecution,” Assistant District Attorney David Napiorski said in a statement.

Karl Schwartz, one of Gwynn’s attorneys, did not immediately respond to a request from the Washington Post on Friday.

During nearly three decades in prison, Gwynn learned to paint and began working with the nonprofit Art for Justice, which supports and displays prisoners’ artwork. In his profile on their website, Gwynn described his life in prison as “sitting here trapped in a box where the days just tick away, the walls closing in like a trash compactor crushing all hopes dreams and life.”

He wrote that he was coerced by detectives into falsely confessing to Smith’s murder while undergoing drug withdrawals, and he documented his years of attempts to get the evidence held by prosecutors and appeal his case. Through it all, he painted.

“It was a key part of my survival,” he told reporters Wednesday, “because it was one way to speak about the injustice that was happening to me, and also the pain that I was feeling.”