A Philadelphia man who was wrongfully convicted of setting a 1984 house fire that killed a man and injured three others has been exonerated after spending nearly four decades behind bars, the District Attorney’s Office announced.
Harold Staten, 72, met his grandchildren and great-grandchildren for the first time on Monday.
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“He has a great-grandson and a granddaughter he hasn’t even seen,” Harold Debose, Staten’s oldest son, told NBC10.
It was a moment that Staten spent decades fighting for.
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The deadly house fire
On Oct. 30, 1984, shortly after 3:30 a.m., a row home caught fire on the 3000 block of North Percy Street in North Philadelphia. Four people inside the home jumped from the second-floor windows. One of the victims – Charles Harris – later died at the hospital of thermal burns.
At the time, a Philadelphia Fire Marshal lieutenant told investigators the fire had been intentionally set in the vestibule by an “open flame applied to an accelerant.” The next day, however, a chemical analysis by the Philadelphia Criminalistics Laboratory revealed no accelerant was detected in the samples of floorboards taken from the vestibule, officials said.
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Police interviewed several witnesses but made no arrest. Then, on March 26, 1986, Harold Staten was arrested and charged with murder and arson after being identified as a suspect. A 17-year-old witness told detectives she saw Staten at the door of the house the night of the fire despite previously telling investigators she hadn’t seen him.
During a two-day bench trial, the Fire Marshal lieutenant testified the fire was deliberately set with an accelerant. The lab test which determined an accelerant was never detected was not included in the trial. The 17-year-old witness also gave conflicting accounts of whether or not she had seen Staten and admitted to using cocaine the night of the fire, the District Attorney’s Office said.
Despite the conflicting testimony, in October of 1986, Judge Lisa Richette still found Staten guilty of arson, second-degree murder and other related offenses. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Clearing his name
Despite his sentencing, Staten maintained his innocence and never gave up in working to clear his name.
“He’s been asking us, asking other innocence organizations, really doing all his own work many years to have his voice heard,” Nilam Singhvi, the legal director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, told NBC10.
Years later, investigators uncovered additional information undermining the credibility of the teen witness. During a post-conviction hearing in 1988, a roommate testified that the teen witness came home from a club the night of the fire “pissy drunk” and “really intoxicated,” officials said. The roommate said the teen was so drunk that he and her boyfriend had to carry her upstairs to bed. The roommate testified that the witness later admitted to lying about Staten being involved in the fire after police started taking her out to lunch.
In 2020, the defense counsel at the Pennsylvania Innocence Project filed a new Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) petition on Staten’s behalf. The District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) began reviewing Staten’s petition for relief in 2022.
In 2023, Dixon Robin, a retired Supervisory Special Agent and Certified Fire Investigator with the ATF, began helping with the investigation. Robin concluded that the initial Fire Marshal’s origin and cause of the deadly fire were not supported by modern fire investigation standards and that the cause should have been considered undetermined rather than arson.
Robin said the then-lieutenant with the Fire Marshal’s office had considered the heavy damage and the fire pattern on the floor in the vestibule as pieces of evidence at the time of the fire. Robin said that those things were only evidence that a fire occurred however, not that it was intentionally set.
“The real tragedy here is, not only was Mr. Staten wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit but no crime occurred here at all,” Amelia Maxfield, an attorney with the Exoneration Project, told NBC10. “So he spent nearly 38 years in prison for a crime that just didn’t happen.”
On Monday, Feb. 5, 2024, the CIU secured Staten’s exoneration, making it the 41st exoneration under Krasner’s administration.
“Substantial changes in fire science have significantly altered modern fire investigation standards and accepted practices. Current fire investigations rely on a modern understanding of fire dynamics and the scientific method — all of which was absent from the investigation in this case,” CIU Assistant Supervisor ADA Carrie Wood said. “A review of Mr. Staten’s conviction, which included a report from a former ATF Special Agent and Certified Fire Investigator, led us to conclude that there is little credible information that could stand up his murder conviction today. We are pleased that the Court of Common Pleas vacated Mr. Staten’s conviction and granted our motion to withdraw all charges against him.”
Reconnecting with his son
Harold Debose was only a teenager when his father was wrongfully convicted. Debose told NBC10 his father's sentencing caused him to spiral down a path of crime and he ended up spending more than 20 years in prison himself.
Debose -- who suffered from PTSD, anxiety and depression -- had to learn how to reintegrate into society after he was released from jail. He'll now have the chance to help his father do the same.
"I've been readjusting myself," Debose said. "But I gotta stick by him."
One of the first activities they planned to do with one another was grab a cup of coffee, one of Debose's fondest memories from his childhood.
"That was my first time tasting coffee. That main memory that shot of coffee gave me, I want to give it back to him," Debose said. "I'm ecstatic but trying to figure out where to begin."
Debose broke down in tears on Tuesday while sitting with his father and speaking to NBC10. Staten said he plans on making up for the time that he lost.
"Life. The joy of it. Seeing my children grow up. Meeting my grandchildren. Going, paying my respects to the people who I lost in my family," Staten said. "Now is the first day of the rest of my life. I've got to start building my foundation."
Pennsylvania is one of 13 states in the U.S. that doesn’t compensate people who’ve been wrongly convicted. Exonerees still have the option of filing a federal civil rights lawsuit, however. It’s unknown currently if Staten plans on taking any legal action.
