An ex-convict who was on death row for 25 years has been killed while attending a funeral, 22 months after his release from state prison.
Christopher Williams, 62, was fatally shot while attending the funeral of a fellow inmate on Friday (December 16) - less than two years after being exonerated and acquitted of his crimes.
In 1989, Williams was convicted of six murders, including one triple murder, but released after almost 30 years in prison when his final murder charge was thrown out due to evidence of prosecutorial misconduct coming to light.
The former inmate's friends told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the father-of-six was part of a funeral procession for formerly incarcerated friend Tyree Little in Philadelphia.
Williams was shot once in the head in the afternoon after he stepped out of his car on the 3000 block of Lehigh Avenue. Police officers rushed him to Temple University Hospital, but tragically he was pronounced dead less than half an hour later.
Law enforcement is yet to arrest anyone responsible for his murder, and it is not determined why the ex-convict was a target of gun crime.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Williams was liberated from death row when a District Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit examined his claim and discovered lying informants, prosecutorial misconduct, and hiding exculpatory evidence.
The DA's office later announced in court that the case against him was "built on a house of cards," involving false informant testimonies, comprehensive undisclosed evidence, and forensic proof that instantly contradicted an informant's story.
"Never in the history of the Pennsylvania judicial system has someone been charged with six murders, acquitted of two, and now exonerated of four," Williams said upon his release, per Daily Mail.
Pennsylvania is one of the few states that does not compensate wrongfully convicted people. In December 2021, Williams filed a suit in a US District Court in Philadelphia and named former District Attorney Lynne Abraham, trial prosecutor David Desiderio, and 17 police detectives as defendants.
"What brings me happiness is my spirit being at peace, and right now it's not," he said in February, according to Daily Mail. "Out here, life is running a hundred times faster than up in that cage and you have to stay on pace or else."
Our thoughts go out to Williams' family and friends.
