The case was immediately botched by police when the witness' statement was lost, a detective recorded over surveillance video of the shooting with a David Letterman episode and the wrong man was arrested.
Percy Phillips was charged with the murder in 2009, immediately after Edwin Chandler was exonerated. The case has been pending ever since.
The 1993 shooting of gas station clerk Brenda Whitfield has been a travesty of justice for her family, but, finally, after nearly 30 years, the murder trial of Percy Phillips, charged in 2009, began on Wednesday.
A murder case that has seen a man wrongfully convicted of the crime could go to trial this week, nearly 30 years after the crime occurred.
Despite a request from prosecutors to put him back in jail with a bond, Percy Phillips left the courtroom a free man until his trial, now set for April 2022.
Twelve years after Percy Phillips was charged with murder, the case has yet to go to trial. And on July 22, he was released from prison after serving out a 20-year sentence in an unrelated assault conviction.
Bevin wrote on Dec. 9 that he was granting West a “full and unconditional pardon” ‘and restoring all his rights as a citizen.
Keith West last year asked a judge to throw out his two manslaughter convictions that were investigated by detective by embattled detective Mark Handy.