“Sex for Lies” Franklin Conviction Reversed
April 6, 2024—The 1980 Philadelphia homicide conviction and life sentence of William Franklin was overturned by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas by Judge Tracey Brandeis-Roman on February 28, 2024. Franklin was granted bail and able to rejoin his family after 44 years of imprisonment.
Franklin was charged as a co-conspirator with Major Tillery in a 1976 pool hall shooting that resulted in the death of one man and severe injuries to another. William Franklin and Major Tillery are actually innocent of the charges. The surviving victim gave a statement from the hospital, naming and describing two men—not Tillery or Franklin—as the shooters. Physical evidence in the pool hall led to potential suspects, but was not followed up.
In the spring of 1980, homicide detectives sought out jail house snitch Emanual Claitt to provide evidence to close “cold cases.” Homicide detectives threatened Claitt, who faced 28 pending felony charges with an unrelated murder charge and granted him special treatment including bail and plea deals as well as “Sex for Lies.”
This was a practice frequently used in the 1980s by homicide detectives of unlawfully bringing girlfriends, prostitutes, and wives into homicide detective interview rooms in the Police Administration Building for sexual encounters with jail house snitches as part of the quid pro quo for their fabricated testimony.
In 2016, Emanuel Claitt recanted his police statement and trial testimonies at the trials of Franklin (November 1980) and Tillery (May 1985). Claitt’s recantation statement was videotaped and was the central new evidence of actual innocence and police and prosecution misconduct in the post-conviction challenges made by Major Tillery and William Franklin in 2016.
Eight years later, after an initial court dismissal, a successful appeal, and several evidentiary hearings, Judge Brandeis-Roman concluded that the “Sex for Lies” scandal was used by the prosecution to obtain William Franklin’s conviction. “Taking Claitt’s video statements to be true, it is concerning that Claitt was offered sexual favors in exchange for false testimony at Franklin’s trial.”1 Her ruling rejected prosecution arguments against the credibility of Claitt’s recantation, stating that to accept them would allow the prosecution to “essentially ‘rig the game’ against the defendant who later brings a claim.”
The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office of Larry Krasner is appealing the ruling vacating Franklin’s conviction because it opens the doors to reversals of numbers of 1980s homicide convictions that were also secured by using the illegal, unconstitutional tactic of “Sex for Lies” to obtain false testimony. (District Attorney Krasner is also upholding Mumia Abu-Jamal’s conviction contravening the overwhelming evidence of Abu-Jamal’s innocence.)
At the top of the impacted cases is that of Major Tillery, best known for his advocacy for Mumia Abu-Jamal, severely ill and needing hospitalization in February 2015. For that Tillery was penalized by being transferred, falsely charged with a violation, and spent four months in “the hole.” It was the investigation spearheaded by Major Tillery with the assistance of attorney Rachel Wolkenstein that led to Emanuel Claitt’s written and videotaped recantation. That new evidence was sent to his co-defendant William Franklin. Tillery’s case is now in the federal court waiting a decision from a Magistrate Judge. The ruling in William Franklin’s case is not precedential in federal court but is a validation of the credibility of Claitt’s recantation, which is a key to a favorable ruling in Major Tillery’s case.