It was a giant step for Deirdre Jones to take the witness stand that day in 2012. She had returned to a Philadelphia courtroom to testify about a 1991 murder near Rittenhouse Square. Her first time on the stand, she said, haunted her for almost two decades. Hollman family photo Chester Hollman III as a high school senior in 1988. After he was convicted of a 1991 murder near Rittenhouse Square, a witness changed her testimony putting him at the scene. Jones had been the star witness in the 1993 trial of Chester Hollman III, charged with killing a University of Pennsylvania student. Hollman, a 21-year-old with no criminal history, had been picked up minutes after the murder and blocks from the scene. Detectives found no physical evidence tying him to the crime. So Jones’ testimony — that she had been riding with Hollman and another man in an SUV when they got out and she heard a gunshot — almost certainly cemented his conviction and life prison sentence. But when Hollman’s appeals lawyers called her back to the witness stand 19 years later, Jones offered a different account. Choking up, Jones swore she had lied at trial, that she and Hollman had been driving alone that night and he had no role in the killing of the victim, Tae-Jung Ho. Jones said detectives coerced her into implicating Hollman. Helping to lock him up, she said, stoked years of depression. “I just thought it was time for me to come out and to tell the truth,” Jones, then a 40-year-old hospital worker, testified in January 2012. “Maybe some of my depression would go away.”

TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer Deirdre Jones was the star witness against Chester Hollman III at his murder trial in 1993. But when she was called to testify at an appeal in 2012, she recanted.

The case illustrates a stark reality of the criminal justice system: People lie. They lie to stay out of jail, to get out of jail, to curry favor with cops. And police sometimes lie, too. It’s so common, so understood within the court system, that regulars have a name for it: Testilying — when officers lie to buttress a weak case, or when a defendant lies in hopes of winning an acquittal. In the end, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright followed a long line of judges who reject witness recantations as unreliable. She did not believe Jones’ new testimony and denied Hollman’s motion to reopen his case. Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright followed a long line of judges who reject witness recantations as unreliable. She did not believe Deirdre Jones’ 2012 testimony and denied Chester Hollman’s motion to reopen his case. Jones wasn’t the first witness to claim to have lied at the trial. A decade before she came forward, Andre Dawkins — the only other person to place Hollman at the murder scene — swore police also had pressured him to falsely implicate Hollman. The twists and turns of the case show how difficult it is to figure out who is lying — and when. If Jones testified truthfully in 1993 but lied on the stand five years ago, she risked a perjury charge. If her more recent testimony was true, then David Baker, the former Philadelphia detective who interviewed her after the murder, lied in 2012 when, under oath, he flatly denied her accusations. Untangling who is lying in criminal cases can be “absolutely daunting,” said lawyer Richard L. Scheff, who recalled wrestling with the issue when he was a federal prosecutor. "There can be any number of reasons why people change their statements." Scientific advances in crime solving — especially DNA testing — have freed the wrongfully convicted and proven guilt. Almost as a rule, experts say, courts don’t like to reopen old cases without compelling scientific evidence.

MICHAEL BRYANT / Staff Photographer Andre Dawkins — the only other person to place Chester Hollman III at the murder scene — later said police also had pressured him.

That is especially problematic in prosecutions built on the testimony of witnesses. Like Hollman’s. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office declined to discuss Hollman’s case. His current appeals lawyer, Alan Tauber, said he plans to ask prosecutors for a new review. Jennifer Creed Selber, former chief of the office’s homicide unit, acknowledged witness recantations are a “pervasive” problem. She believes witnesses usually recant because they fear retaliation from defendants. “If we attempted to prosecute every witness that perjures themselves, it would be a completely unworkable and impossible situation.” Jennifer Creed Selber, former chief of the District Attorney's Office’s homicide unit “If we attempted to prosecute every witness that perjures themselves,” said Selber, “it would be a completely unworkable and impossible situation.” If the verdict in the Hollman case is accurate, one participant has been lying consistently since 1991: Hollman has never stopped saying he is innocent. Pressure on police, witnesses Five years ago, the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's law school started a database of criminal exonerations since 1989. The National Registry of Exonerations has catalogued over 2,000 cases. DNA evidence spurred many, but the growing number of exonerations has led to a “profound change” in the perception of convictions, said Samuel Gross, senior editor of the registry. “What the DNA cases showed everybody,” he said, “is that a lot of criminal convictions that no one had thought to think about were wrong.” More than half of his registry’s cases involve perjury and/or false accusations. Much lying stems from misconduct by police and prosecutors desperate to solve crimes, researchers say. “Witnesses are pressured, threatened, subjected to violence, offered secret deals such as reduced charges in the case at hand or for other crimes, or otherwise coerced or persuaded to falsely accuse the defendant,” a 2013 registry report concluded. James McCloskey, the founder of Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based organization that has helped exonerate more than 50 prisoners since 1980, said about three dozen witnesses have recanted their testimony in Centurion cases. “They want to reconcile themselves, really help right a terrible wrong,” McCloskey said, but they fear getting in trouble. It can take years to get a witness to publicly acknowledge the lie — and then additional years to actually win an exoneration. Fernando Bermudez spent nearly two decades in a New York prison before being cleared of the 1991 murder of a teen in Greenwich Village, despite recantations from all five eyewitnesses against him two years after the shooting. A judge later decided to throw out the charges because of the recantations and police misconduct. Jose Medina, who is serving life for the 1991 killing of a Philadelphia police officer’s brother, is waiting for the new trial he was granted in 2011 after a prosecution witness admitted lying under oath. Don Ray Adams Jr., a Philadelphia barber, was exonerated in 2011 — 21 years into a life sentence for murder — after the key witness against him recanted. A convicted felon and crack cocaine addict who said she had turned her life around contacted Adams’ lawyer in 2007. She said police pressured her to lie and say Adams was the man who shot two others during a drug deal. Adams won a new trial. A jury acquitted him.

Exonerated After False Testimony Six local cases of men who were convicted of murder and other charges in part because of false testimony, only to be later exonerated. The six spent a combined 107 years in prison. Edward Baker Philadelphia Charge: Murder of a man who was bound, strangled, and stabbed to death with an ice pick in 1973 Convicted: 1974 Sentence: Life Exonerated: 2002 False Testimony: The man who stabbed the victim recanted his testimony that Baker had killed the victim. The killer said he lied to get a shorter sentence for himself. Terence McCracken Delaware County Charge: Murder of a 71-year-old man during an armed robbery of a deli in 1983 Convicted: 1983 Sentence: Life Exonerated: 1995 False Testimony: The key evidence against McCracken was the testimony of a high school classmate, who recanted and said police bullied him into lying. Raymond Carter Philadelphia Charge: Murder in shooting death of a man at the Pike Bar in North Philadelphia in 1986 Convicted: 1988 Sentence: Life Exonerated: 1996 False Testimony: A police officer paid an informant $500 to falsely accuse and testify against Carter. A judge ordered a new trial and prosecutors dismissed the charges. Larry Peterson Burlington County Charge: Rape and murder of a woman found strangled on a dirt road in 1987 Convicted: 1989 Sentence: Life Exonerated: 2006, after DNA tests proved Peterson was not the rapist False Testimony: Three men told police Peterson had confessed to the crime while they were in a car together on their way to work and an inmate with pending charges said he heard Peterson say he killed the victim. Records showed Peterson did not work on the day coworkers said he confessed to them. Don Ray Adams Philadelphia Charge: Murder of two men during a drug deal in 1990 Convicted: 1992 Sentence: Life Exonerated: 2011 False Testimony: The key witness against him, a convicted felon and crack cocaine addict, told Adams’ lawyer in 2007 she had turned her life around and confessed to lying at trial. She said police pressured her to testify against Adams. A jury acquitted him at a new trial. Anthony Wright Philadelphia Charge: Rape and murder of his 77-year-old Nicetown neighbor in 1991 Convicted: 1993 Sentence: Life without parole Exonerated: 2016, after DNA tests proved Wright was not the rapist False Testimony: Three of the five witnesses from Wright’s 1993 trial who made statements that Wright had entered the victim’s house recanted their statements at the 2016 retrial. The two other witnesses had died.

The year of that double murder, 1990, Philadelphia recorded 500 homicides, a high mark in at least a half-century. Experts say such rising crime can spur a spike in witness intimidation. If there is a “significant uptick in crime,” said Christopher Slobogin, a Vanderbilt University criminal law professor, “there’s going to be more pressure on police to put pressure on witnesses.” The year Chester Hollman was arrested, Philadelphia logged 444 homicides. By late August 1991, detectives were scrambling to solve two or three killings a day. Tae-Jung Ho was victim 301. A killing on 22nd Street Ho, a 24-year-old South Korean, was enrolled in an English program at the University of Pennsylvania. He was walking on 22nd Street, between Chestnut and Walnut Streets, at 1 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 20, when two men approached. One held him down while the other shot him in the chest. It is unclear whether anything was taken. Police found $99 in Ho’s wallet. Junko Nihei, a 20-year-old Pennsylvania Ballet student walking with Ho, said the shooter wore a blue hooded shirt or jacket and his accomplice — whom prosecutors later alleged was Hollman — wore a dark baseball cap and “perhaps reddish color” shorts. “I just thought it was time for me to come out and to tell the truth. Maybe some of my depression would go away.” Deirdre Jones, witness in the 1993 trial of Chester Hollman III The 911 calls began at 1:01 a.m. One witness said she saw three black men and one brown-skinned woman in or near a van or Jeep. Another said he saw two black teenagers and a white Chevrolet Blazer with a female with a “medium complexion” at the wheel. Taxi driver John Henderson said he was driving on 22nd Street when he saw a flash, then a man in a blue hoodie get into a white vehicle on Chestnut Street. Henderson told police four people were inside the SUV — and he followed the vehicle for about seven blocks until he lost it. He gave police a partial tag: YZA. At 1:05 a.m., police pulled over a white Chevrolet Blazer with a license plate starting with YZA near 22nd and Locust, about six blocks from the shooting. Hollman was driving; Jones sat in the passenger seat. Hollman was wearing a black baseball cap and aqua pants, according to trial testimony. Police said they saw red spots on his pants that looked like blood.