Court orders release of Pa. man held more than 40 years

1-22-2011 Pennsylvania:

After spending more than 45 years in prison, 82-year-old Louis Mickens-Thomas will be released Tuesday, thanks to a federal court order.

Mickens-Thomas was convicted of the 1964 murder of Edith Connor, 12, largely on the testimony of a crime-lab worker who was later discredited. The former owner of a shoe-repair shop has steadfastly maintained his innocence.

A team of lawyers, activists, and scientists has claimed for years that Mickens-Thomas might have been wrongly convicted. An Inquirer story in November documented many of those claims while focusing on the scientific evidence.

"We are thrilled that Lou will enjoy whatever years he has left in freedom," said David Rudovsky, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and one of Mickens-Thomas' lawyers.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that Mickens-Thomas could be released from Graterford Prison as soon as his lawyers demonstrated they could find suitable housing for him.

"We've already found that," said James McCloskey, a longtime champion of Mickens-Thomas' who heads Centurion Ministries, a Princeton group devoted to helping exonerate the wrongly convicted.

McCloskey said Mickens-Thomas will live with his nephew Calvin Mickens and his wife in the Poconos town of Tobyhanna.

Mickens, 62, a retired security officer, said someone from the parole board came to his home Friday and informed him that Mickens-Thomas would be released Tuesday.

"He's my uncle, and I want to do what I can to help him," said Mickens, who believes his uncle is innocent.

Mickens-Thomas has never officially been exonerated, but his conviction was commuted in 1995 by then-Gov. Robert P. Casey Sr. The Pennsylvania Parole Board refused to let him out until 2004, when the same federal appeals court first ordered his release.

Mickens-Thomas returned to prison 15 months later for a parole violation. He allegedly made hostile comments to a counselor who was leading a course for sex offenders that Thomas was required to take, though he maintains he had nothing to do with the crime of which he was convicted.

The victim lived in the same West Philadelphia neighborhood as Mickens-Thomas, near 40th Street and Girard Avenue. Her body was found in an alley about 50 feet from the back of his apartment. The medical examiner determined that she had been raped and strangled.

The initial conviction of Mickens-Thomas was based entirely on "trace" evidence, including microscopic fibers and bits of wax and paint chips found on Connor's body that crime-lab workers said resembled materials from Mickens-Thomas' apartment and adjacent shop.

The lab worker who testified against him, Agnes Mallatratt, was later exposed as a junior high school dropout who repeatedly committed perjury by inventing her scientific credentials. In a second trial in 1969, crime-lab director Edward Burke said he supervised all of Mallatratt's work, and the conviction was upheld.

Still, court transcripts from the trials reveal a number of inconsistencies. In the first, Mallatratt testified that she had worked alone, while in the second, Burke said he worked with her at nearly every step.

Both Burke and Mallatratt have since died.

Swabs taken from the body might have contained DNA from the perpetrator, but the technology to analyze DNA did not exist at the time.

McCloskey, who agreed to help Mickens-Thomas in 1991, tried to get the samples tested that year, but discovered they had been destroyed just three weeks earlier.

At a hearing Jan. 12, John Knorr, chief deputy attorney general, argued that the octogenarian inmate had exhibited an "escalating pattern of high-risk behavior" when he was free the last time.

That pattern, Knorr said, including forcibly kissing an elderly woman from his church and fixing umbrellas that he would offer to women stranded in rainstorms.

"Oh, my goodness," Third Circuit Judge Maryanne Trump Barry responded in mock horror.

"You're a brave man for being here today, given the arguments we've heard and the papers we've read," Barry said to Knorr.

The judge's decision stated that there was "a combination of willful noncompliance, bad faith, and sufficient inference of retaliation or vindictiveness on the part of the [Parole] Board."

Parole Board spokesman Leo Dunn said agency officials were reviewing the court order and had no comment.

In an interview at Graterford in October, Mickens-Thomas said he enjoys reading and likes to discuss books with other inmates. He is active in the Christian Science ministry and has held a number of jobs, including making shoes, cutting hair, and caring for pigs on a prison farm.

Before his conviction at 36, Mickens-Thomas had been married and divorced, and had several children. He now has a number of grandchildren. He said he hoped to reconnect with his family. ..Source..