Prosecutors drop case against CJ Rice, subject of Jake Tapper cover story in The Atlantic

PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors will not seek a new trial against C.J. Rice, a South Philadelphia man convicted of four counts of attempted murder in 2013, they told a judge during a minutes-long hearing Monday.

There was no contention between the District Attorney’s Office and Rice’s defense team when prosecutors said at the Court of Common Pleas hearing that they would not continue to prosecute Rice, essentially exonerating him.

The decision brings Rice’s case, which resulted in a 30-to 60-year prison sentence, to a close, 12 years after he was incarcerated at State Correctional Institution Chester in Delaware County. A federal court ordered in November that Rice, petitioning that his conviction was unlawful, be released from custody or retried within 180 days.

The case garnered national attention when CNN anchor Jake Tapper, a Philadelphia native, published an article in The Atlantic calling Rice’s initial defense “dangerously incompetent.”

“It’s just great to see justice finally done in this case,” Tapper told the Inquirer Monday. “I know the District Attorney gets criticized for all sorts of things, but having an office that is willing to listen to reason and evidence — even if that means overturning a conviction — is no small thing.”

Tapper learned of the case from his father, Philadelphia doctor Theodore Tapper, who had treated Rice for gunshot wounds in the days before the shooting and said that Rice would have been physically unable to commit the crime due to his injuries.

Both Tappers attended Monday’s hearing, alongside members of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and the Exoneration Project, legal groups that work to exonerate those wrongly convicted of crimes.

”We’re overjoyed,” said Karl Schwartz, a Philadelphia attorney who took Rice’s case as it weaved through the appeals process. “We’re incredibly relieved for C.J. ... we’re also dismayed that an innocent guy had to spend so long a period of time in prison. When you have to fix it at the tail end, that’s not how the process is supposed to work.”

Schwartz and other members of the defense team told the news to Rice over the phone immediately after the hearing. Rice, whose family did not attend the hearing, has been released on bail since December, according to his team.

”We’re just so happy for C.J.,” said Nilam Sanghvi,” legal director for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. “It’s just a reminder of what got us here, which is eye witness misidentification, poor legal assistance, prosecutorial overreach. So I hope we start learning from some of these lessons.”

There was no physical evidence linking Rice to the 2011 shooting and the conviction of the then-17-year-old rested on the testimony of one eye witness who claimed Rice had run from the scene, according to the Pennsylvania Innocence Project.

But Tapper, the doctor, testified that given Rice’s injuries from a shooting five days beforehand, he likely wouldn’t have been able to ”walk standing up straight, let along run with any degree of speed.”

Theodore Tapper, exiting the Kidd Stout Criminal Justice Center, told reporters that he’d just talked to C.J. and that he “had a big smile on his face over the phone.”

”Finally, the system adjudicated him to be innocent,” Tapper said. “It should never have happened. He was no different than the five or six of us standing around here now. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, had the wrong skin color, and grew up the way he grew up — that’s why he was locked up for 12 years.”