In May 2021, 51-year old Eric Riddick, who had served more than 29 years behind bars, was released after it was determined by the District Attorney’s Office that he did not get a fair trial.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, he had been charged for the 1991 killing of another man named William Catlett in Southwest Philadelphia. However, he and others have always maintained that he was not even at the scene of the crime when it happened.
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It was his lawyer, Attorney Emeka Igwe, founder of The Igwe Firm, that fought for his freedom. Igwe, who once worked for the District Attorney’s office himself, was able to successfully dispute the prosecutors’ contention that Riddick was an accomplice to the murder. He was able to bring to light through ballistics testing that the weapon that authorities originally said belonged to Riddick was not even the murder weapon.
Riddick’s case has been getting a lot of national attention and even caught the attention of rapper Meek Mill, who was his former cellmate at the State Correctional Institution Chester who was imprisoned there from November 2017 to April 2018 for probation violations related to a decade-old conviction on gun and drug charges.
After his release, Mill spoke out in favor of Riddick via Twitter.
Now the pressure is on Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Wolf to grant Riddick a much-deserved full pardon.