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Michael Grant

Exonerations from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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At 6:45 p.m. on December 29, 2006, two men robbed 38-year-old Manh “Bruce” Doan at gunpoint in a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They took his car keys and a few dollars and drove off in his Mercury Grand Marquis.

Michael Williams, an off-duty Philadelphia police officer, had been driving through the neighborhood and had seen part of the incident. He would later testify that he thought something was off because the two men interacting with Doan were wearing puffy winter jackets on an unseasonably warm night. Doan told Williams what happened, and Williams quickly gave chase.

When Williams caught up with the stolen car a few blocks away, one of the men got out and began shooting. The man got back in the car, and the chase continued into central Philadelphia, with Williams and the man in the car exchanging gunfire.

At Sixth and Ritner streets, the men jumped out of the car and ran. By now, a police helicopter was involved in the pursuit, and officers caught 21-year-old Antuan White. The other man got away. Police brought Doan to the scene, and he identified White as one of the robbers.

Doan described the other robber as a Black man, about 5’ 5”, approximately 130 pounds, with a dark complexion, wearing a black puffy jacket and a black skull cap.

Later that night, the police were called to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where healthcare workers were treating 27-year-old Michael Grant for a gunshot wound to his arm.

Officer Christopher Campbell interviewed Grant. According to Campbell, Grant said that he had been driving around when he decided to stop at a Chinese restaurant at 49th and Paschall streets in West Philadelphia. When he got out of his car, he saw a couple of men who “didn’t look right.” He turned to leave, then heard gunshots, and felt a bullet hit his arm.

At the time of his admission, Grant was wearing a brown varsity jacket with white sleeves that had a bullet entry and exit hole in the sleeve.

Grant said a bystander drove him to the hospital. Campbell said in his report that he went to the location and could find no evidence of a shooting. He also couldn’t find Grant’s car. There were also no reports of gunfire in the area.

Grant had a light complexion, a black goatee, was 5’10” and weighed more than 300 pounds, far different from Doan’s description. But based on the timing of Grant’s injury and the apparent problems in his account of how he had been shot, detectives assembled a photo array including Grant and took it to Doan’s home. He identified Grant as the second robber.

Grant was arrested at the hospital on the morning of December 30, 2006. He was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, robbery, robbery of a vehicle, unlawful possession of a weapon, and conspiracy.

White pled guilty to a weapons charge and a conspiracy charge and was sentenced in July 2007 to five to 10 years in prison. Prior to trial, Grant moved to suppress Doan’s photo-array identification and bar him from making an in-court identification. At a hearing on October 9, 2007, Doan testified about the two assailants. White was the tall man, about 5’7”, and Grant was the “short” man, about 5’5” and 150 pounds. Doan said the short man wore a mask but at some point during the carjacking pushed the mask up over his head, exposing his face. Doan testified that he had identified Grant from the array. He also made a separate identification in the courtroom.

The officer who conducted the photo array said the array contained eight photos, and he had told Doan prior to viewing that the suspect was one of the persons in the array.

Judge Sandy Byrd denied the motion to suppress.

Prior to trial, the state located another witness. After the robbery, Doan had called 911 and then gone to a neighbor’s house, where he spoke with John Zirilli, the neighbor’s boyfriend and a Philadelphia police officer, who would later testify that he saw Doan interacting with the robbers.

Grant’s trial in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas began on September 18, 2008. White did not testify. There was no physical or forensic evidence connecting Grant to the crime. Doan testified about the carjacking and the actions of the tall man and the short man. He said the short man carried a 9 mm handgun. The tall man displayed a .38-caliber revolver. Doan said he tried to stall the men by pretending he didn’t understand English, and the short man became frustrated and pulled up his mask. Doan said that it was Zirilli who called 911.

During cross-examination, Grant’s attorney, Mythri Jayaraman, highlighted inconsistencies in Doan’s testimony. Most glaring was that Grant was taller and more than twice as heavy as Doan’s description. Doan also backpedaled and said that he had dialed 911 before knocking on Zirilli’s door.

Doan testified that he had selected Grant from the array because Grant was wearing pigtails. But Grant didn’t have pigtails in that picture, although he had them at trial. In addition, Grant had a black beard in the array, but Doan had testified at a preliminary hearing that the “short” man had a “silver-type of beard.”

Zirilli testified that he was taking out the trash when he saw Doan talking to an unknown Black man. Doan waved and called out, “Hey police,” and Zirilli said he waved back and went inside.

A few minutes later, Doan knocked on Zirilli’s door and said he had been robbed. Zirilli testified that he called 911, gave a description of the man he saw to a supervisor and then gave the phone to Doan. Zirilli identified Grant as the man he saw with Doan at the time of the robbery.

During cross-examination, after the 911 tape was played, Zirilli acknowledged that Doan was already on the phone with the dispatchers when Doan knocked on the door. Zirilli testified that he made no statement to police that night or prior to Grant’s suppression hearing in October 2007. He made his first statement to police on December 21, 2007, during an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation into the shots fired at Officer Williams.

Lieutenant John Prendergast testified that police learned of Zirilli’s involvement during the IAB investigation, after examining the phone records of the 911 call. “When we contacted that cell phone number, we realized it was a police officer who was also off-duty and on the block,” he said. This purported call was not introduced into evidence.

Jayaraman sought to recall Zirilli to ask him additional questions about his shifting testimony regarding the placement of the 911 call, but Erica Wilson, the assistant district attorney, said Zirilli was unavailable because of overtime issues.

Williams, the other off-duty officer, testified that he was unable to see the face of either robber. He said that the man standing outside the car was shorter than Doan, who had testified he was 5’7”. But he also said the man was ““rather sizeable […] built or just thick or wide.”

Officer Donna Jaconi, a member of the police department’s crime-scene unit, testified that she was unable to recover any usable prints from the Marquis. She said she found some smudges, but they lacked sufficient detail, and she did not submit any of the prints for analysis or comparison.

No testing for blood or gunshot residue was performed on the clothes Grant was wearing upon admission to the hospital. Sharee Bostic and Lawranda Casey each testified that they had acted as “straw purchasers” for Grant, buying weapons on his behalf and registering them under their name. The women said they bought 9 mm and Glock handguns. Williams used a Glock.

Officer Lewis Grandizio, a forensic analyst for the Philadelphia Police Department, testified that the weapons bought by Bostic and Casey were not consistent with the firearm evidence in the case.

Bostic also testified that Grant told her he had been shot in the arm by the police. Gregory Parker testified that Grant told him the shooting happened during a “struggle” with the police.

Grant did not testify. While he had filed a notice of an alibi defense, listing five potential witnesses, none of these persons testified, and Grant told Judge Byrd during the trial that he and Jayaraman had discussed the issues and concluded that it was “best not to.”

During her closing argument, Wilson told jurors that Zirilli’s failure to report what he had seen for more than a year was an oversight. “Maybe you wouldn’t either if you were having a party at your house,” she said. Wilson also told the jury that there was a simple explanation for the lack of blood in the Marquis after Grant had been shot; the puffy jacket he had been wearing “absorbed” the blood and “keeps all the mess inside of the coat.” She also connected Grant’s purchases of the weapons to the carjacking. “What kind of man gets women to buy him these kind of guns,” she asked. In addition, she said: “The witnesses we have put forward are the police. The police have testified honestly.”

The jury deliberated for three days and twice indicated it was deadlocked. Its members asked for clarification on 12 issues, half related to Doan’s testimony. After the second deadlock, Judge Byrd gave the jury a Spencer charge, asking its members to “consult with each other and to deliberate with a view towards reaching a unanimous agreement” and to “reexamine his or her own views and to change his opinion if convinced that it is erroneous.”

The jury convicted Grant on all charges on September 25, 2008. He was later sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison. Separately, Grant pled guilty to four counts related to the straw purchases and was sentenced in 2009 to five to 10 years in prison. (Bostic pled guilty to similar charges and received a sentence of six to 23 months in prison.)

Grant appealed, arguing that Doan’s identification from the photo array should have been suppressed, because Grant did not fit the description provided by Doan. He also said Judge Byrd had erred in letting the jury hear a recording of the 911 call made by Williams during the car chase. The appeal said the recording was prejudicial because it “played like an action movie.” In addition, Grant said that the judge should not have allowed Bostic and Casey to testify about the gun purchases, because they were unrelated alleged crimes.

A three-judge panel of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the conviction on August 4, 2010.

In 2011, Grant moved for a new trial under Pennsylvania’s Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA). At the heart of his claim was that the state had committed a violation of Brady v. Maryland, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence, by failing to disclose Doan’s extensive criminal record, which could have been used as impeachment evidence.

Doan, under the name of Bruce Doan, had been arrested in 1999 and pled guilty in 2001 in state court to theft by deception and criminal conspiracy. In 2000, also under the name Bruce Doan, he was indicted in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on bank fraud charges. He pled guilty in June 2000 and was sentenced to a year in prison.

Under the name Manh Doan, Doan was indicted, also in the Eastern District, on federal fraud charges in August 2006 and pled guilty a month later. He was sentenced in June 2009 to five years in prison.

Judge Byrd dismissed the PCRA petition on August 26, 2016. He wrote: “Here, there is no evidence the Commonwealth was aware of the victim’s criminal convictions. [The victim] did have several criminal convictions, but those convictions were all prosecuted under a different name. Therefore, searching for [the victim’s] name would not have revealed the convictions. Further Petitioner does not allege how the lack of impeachment on the victim's criminal record would cause prejudice in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.”

The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the ruling on May 6. 2019.

Now acting pro se, Grant filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The petition again asserted the state’s failure to disclose Doan’s criminal record, but also claimed misconduct by the police and the prosecutor and ineffective representation by Jayaraman that violated his right to a fair trial.

According to the petition, Jayaraman was ineffective for failing to request proper jury instructions on the lack of fingerprint and gunshot evidence inculpating Grant. The petition also said Jayaraman should have asked for a cautionary instruction on Zirilli’s courtroom identification of Grant, which took place nearly two years after the carjacking.

Separately, the petition said Wilson’s closing arguments asserted facts not in evidence when she told jurors about the absorption qualities of a puffy jacket and the reason that Zirilli didn’t report his observations on the day of the crime. (Zirilli never testified he was at a party; he said he was with his girlfriend.) The petition also said Wilson had improperly vouched for the credibility of the police witnesses.

In its response, the state said that Grant’s claims on prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel were procedurally defaulted based on the state appellate court’s previous rulings on the case. The state said that it had not suppressed knowledge of Doan’s federal convictions; it didn’t know of those crimes, as they took place in a separate jurisdiction. That said, the evidence wasn’t material to the conviction.

“Under the totality of these circumstances, it is not reasonably probable that the impeachment of Mr. Doan with his unrelated white-collar federal crimes from years earlier would have led to a different outcome at trial,” the state said.

On July 27, 2022, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Strawbridge recommended that Grant’s habeas petition be denied. He agreed with the state’s response and said that prosecutors could not suppress evidence they did not possess and that this evidence was also not material. Magistrate Strawbridge referred to earlier court rulings that described the evidence against Grant as “overwhelming.”

The recommendation did say that although Wilson had improperly vouched for the credibility of the police witnesses, there was no “reasonable probability” that the comments affected the verdict.

U.S. District Court Judge Chad Kenney adopted the recommendation on October 6, 2022.

Ten days later, with research assistance from the Liberation Foundation, Grant moved to alter the judgment. He said the court’s ruling had given the state too much leeway on its failure to find and disclose Doan’s criminal record, simply because he used an alias in state court.

“The prosecutor’s ignorance of the complainant’s criminal record, which spanned several states (including Pennsylvania) and federal jurisdiction as well does not justify the State’s failure to produce it,” Grant wrote. “Brady (and its progeny) provides that the good faith (inadvertent withholding) or bad faith (purposely withholding) is irrelevant to the due process inquiry.”

Grant’s filing also said that the case against him was not overwhelming; the jury had deadlocked twice and deliberated for three days.

After Grant filed his motion, the state asked Judge Kenney to appoint an attorney to represent Grant in further proceedings. The state’s request also conceded that prosecutors had failed to disclose Doan’s state convictions and that—contrary to earlier court rulings—there was not overwhelming evidence of Grant’s guilt.

Judge Kenney appointed Thomas Dreyer to represent Grant, and Dreyer and the state engaged in more discovery. This resulted in Grant accessing Doan’s complete criminal history, including his use of seven aliases in his interactions with law enforcement. In a memorandum of law, Dreyer said that Jayaraman would have been able to use this information to cast doubt on Doan’s credibility. The memorandum also said that at the time of the trial, Doan was cooperating with federal authorities in their investigation into mortgage fraud.

On July 24, 2023, the state consented to granting Grant’s habeas petition. Later that day, Judge Kenney conditionally granted the petition. Grant’s convictions were vacated in state court on December 28, 2023, and he was released from custody on January 6, 2024.

His retrial began on October 1, 2024. Grant was now represented by Emeka Igwe. The state’s case had changed considerably. Neither Zirilli, Prendergast, Jaconi, Grandizio, Casey nor Bostic testified. Doan no longer testified that Zirilli placed the 911 call. Instead, he said, he either used a friend’s phone or one of his other phones. In addition, Doan did not make a courtroom identification of Grant. He also testified that he was coerced into testifying at the second trial, because a failure to do so would have been a parole violation.

White, Grant’s alleged accomplice, also testified. He said he never met Grant until they were in a holding cell together. He also identified his actual accomplice as Anthony “Tone” Jackson, a man with a history of committing robberies and home invasions.

After a brief deliberation, the jury acquitted Grant of all charges on October 3, 2024.

– Ken Otterbourg

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Posting Date: 1/16/2025
Last Updated: 1/16/2025
State:Pennsylvania
County:Philadelphia
Most Serious Crime:Attempted Murder
Additional Convictions:Robbery, Assault, Weapon Possession or Sale, Conspiracy
Reported Crime Date:2006
Convicted:2008
Exonerated:2024
Sentence:25 to 50 years
Race/Ethnicity:Black
Sex:Male
Age at the date of reported crime:27
Contributing Factors:Mistaken Witness ID, Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct, Inadequate Legal Defense
Did DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration?:No