In 1990, wealthy Puerto Rican businessman Domingo Martinez was robbed and murdered in Philadelphia. Cops soon singled out 16-year-old Shaun Thomas and his friends in the North Philadelphia’s Abbotsford Homes housing project as suspects.
But Shaun had a seemingly air-tight alibi: he was at a hearing at Center City’s Youth Study Center for an unrelated juvenile offense at the time the murder was committed.
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Despite the evidence to support this fact, Shaun was convicted of murder on January 31, 1995 and sentenced to life without parole. He was locked up at age 19.
Shaun tried to years to fight the ruling, but his appeals were dismissed. So Shaun took it upon himself to win his freedom.
“From the time I got locked up to the time I got released, I wrote letters,”Shaun recently said. “I wrote letters to people I didn’t even know. I just knew that one day – I didn’t know when – that I would be a free person.â€
Over the 24 years that Shaun spent in prison, he continued to fight for justice. “Keep writing. Keep fighting. Never give up.” That became Shaun’s mantra.
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In 2009, a retired Philadelphia police officer and attorney received one of Shaun’s letters. He believed Shaun’s story and took up his case on a pro bono basis on behalf of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project.
One of the most bizarre factors in Shaun’s conviction was a missing case file. The police lost the 36-page file on the Martinez’s murder, a file which contained names of all other suspects. The file was lost until it mysteriously turned up in May 2017, over 20 years after it first went missing.
When the file was found, an alternate murder theory came to light. Not only that, attorneys interviewed the man who accused Shaun of the murder. Two decades after making his accusation, he admitted it was all a lie.
Now, at age 43, Shaun is, at last, a free man.
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“It’s been a long struggle, but you can’t give up. That’s why I’m here today.”Amazingly, he’s not bitter: “You know, time heals all wounds.”
A devout Muslim, he says his faith kept him sane. That, and an incredible support team of friends, family, and pro bono lawyers.
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“I don’t feel angry. I feel a little disappointed that the system let me down to a degree but I don’t feel angry, because I support myself with a nice group of people. I believed in God, and I believed in myself, and I believed in you know the people that surrounded me,” he said.
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Now Shaun is most excited to spend time with friends and family, to marry his fiancée who he met in prison, and to see his little brother play basketball.
“I learned a lot in prison,” added Shaun. “I learned… maturity, I learned to respect things, and I learned that family will be there–no matter what–at the end of the day.”
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