$6.25 Million Settlement for Philadelphia Man Wrongfully Imprisoned 21 Years for Murder He Did Not Commit

On August 6, 1996, a man was shot and killed during a robbery at his West Philadelphia home. Terrance Lewis, 17 years old at the time and with no prior criminal record, was arrested and charged. The case against him rested on a photo-array identification by the victim's girlfriend. What Philadelphia detectives did not disclose was that the same witness had identified a completely different person as the armed suspect just two days after the murder. That statement was suppressed and kept from Lewis's defense team for more than two decades.

Lewis was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He spent 21 years incarcerated across five state prisons. In 2017, the hidden witness statement finally surfaced. District Attorney Larry Krasner's Conviction Integrity Unit, which began reviewing claims like Lewis's after Krasner took office in 2018, supported the reinvestigation. In May 2019, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Barbara McDermott vacated Lewis's conviction, ruling that the suppression of the exculpatory statement was a constitutional violation. Lewis was freed after more than two decades behind bars.

Following his release, Lewis filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia. The complaint alleged rampant police misconduct: detectives had coerced witnesses, concealed evidence pointing to his innocence, and built a case on a single identification while burying the statement that contradicted it. Robert Ross of Ross Feller Casey LLP, along with co-counsel Kevin Harden Jr., represented Lewis in the litigation.

On June 30, 2020, the City of Philadelphia and Terrance Lewis announced a $6.25 million settlement resolving the lawsuit without further trial proceedings. At the time, it was the second-largest payout to an exoneree in Philadelphia history, surpassed only by the approximately $10 million settlement reached by Anthony Wright in 2018. Mayor Jim Kenney acknowledged the settlement publicly, stating that money alone could not compensate Lewis for the 21 years he spent incarcerated.

After the settlement, Lewis founded the Terrance Lewis Liberation Foundation, a nonprofit focused on investigating wrongful convictions and supporting exonerated individuals with housing, employment, and health services in Philadelphia.