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Philly To Pay $9.8M To Man Exonerated Who Spent 28 Years In Prison After Wrongful Conviction For Murder
Joe Clark, Paterson, New Jersey's ‘Principled Principal,’ Has Passed Away
Joe Clark, former principal of Eastside High School in Pater- son, New Jersey, poses for a photo in the school hallways in Feb- ruary of 1988.
In one of the largest wrong- ful-conviction settlements in Philadelphia history, the city said Wednesday it will pay $9.8 million to a man exoner- ated after spending nearly three decades in prison for a murder he did not commit.
Chester Hollman, III was 21, with no criminal record and a job as an armored-car driver, when he was pulled over in Center City one night in 1991 and charged with the fatal shooting of a University of Pennsylvania student in a botched street robbery. A judge ordered him released last year at age 49, citing evidence that police and prosecutors built
CHESTER HOLLMAN, III
their case on fabricated state- ments from people they co- erced as witnesses and later withheld evidence pointing to
the likely true perpetrators of the crime.
The agreement announced Wednesday is the latest in a string of seven-figure settle- ments stemming from claims of misconduct by city police in the late 1980s and ’90s. Those cases have led to more than a dozen exonerations in recent years and have cost the city more than $35 million since 2018.
“There are no words to ex- press what was taken from me,” Hollman said in a state- ment. “But this settlement closes out a difficult chapter in my life as my family and I now embark on a new one.”
PATERSON, N.J.-- Joe Louis Clark, the baseball bat and bullhorn-wielding Principal whose unwavering commitment to his students and uncompromising disci- plinary methods at Paterson, New Jersey's Eastside High School inspired the 1989 film Lean on Me, has passed away. A longtime resident of South Orange, NJ, Clark (82) re- tired to Gainesville, Florida. He was at home and sur- rounded by his family when he succumbed to his long bat- tle with illness on December 29, 2020.
Born in Rochelle, Georgia,
on May 8, 1938, Clark's fam- ily moved north to Newark, New Jersey, when he was six years old. It was in the Gar- den State that Clark built his legacy through both his ac- complished career in educa- tion and his children: Olympian and business- woman Joetta Clark Diggs, Olympic Athlete and Director of Sports Business Develop- ment for the Bermuda Tourism Authority Hazel Clark, and accomplished athlete and Director of Track and Field and Cross Country at Stanford University Joe Clark, Jr.
Here’s What We Know About The Fatal Police Shooting Outside A Minneapolis Gas Station
Most of what the public knows about the deadly police shooting of Dolal Idd, 23, comes from a 27-second clip from an officer body-camera video that Minneapolis police released Thursday.
City officials took the un- precedented step of releasing the footage less than 24 hours after the shooting, saying it was needed to further trans- parency and dispel rumors. Police Chief Medaria Ar- radondo said his officers were responding to deadly force and that the video ap- pears to show Idd shooting at police before they returned fire. But activists remain skep- tical of that narrative and still have questions about what led to the tense encounter.
The shooting set off protests and vigils, as well as renewed calls by some ac- tivists to abolish the police. It was the city’s first police killing since May 25, when Of- ficer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for about nine minutes. Floyd’s killing, less than a mile from where Idd was shot, set off a worldwide movement focused on race and police brutality.
There also are concerns about the treatment of Idd’s family in the wake of the shooting.
Bayle Gelle shows a photo of his son, Dolal Idd, who was fa- tally shot by Minneapolis po- lice Wednesday.
Here’s what we know so far about Wednesday’s shooting and what has happened since then.
What happened? Arradondo said officers were executing a traffic stop, which took place at the Holi- day gas station at 36th Street East and Cedar Avenue in south Minneapolis, as part of a “probable cause” weapons investigation. But he didn’t offer more specifics about it. A police spokesperson earlier said that the victim was sus- pected of a felony. Ar- radondo said after watching the video, he’s convinced that
Idd shot at officers before they returned fire. Officers re- covered a weapon at the scene, he said.
“Should the officers not react in a deadly force situation, and knowing that community members' lives were at stake as well?” Arradondo told re- porters Thursday. “The offi- cers are trained to protect community members' lives and their own."
A woman in the car with Idd was not injured, and nei- ther were police.
•What does the video show?
At the Holiday gas station parking lot, officers are heard ordering the driver of a white car to stop his vehicle and to put his hands up. The car keeps moving, but police SUVs box him in. A slowed- down version of the video re- leased by police appears to show shards of glass from the white car's window shattering outward. More than a dozen shots then ring out.
Activists, along with family and friends of Idd, say they can't make out what is hap- pening in the video. Police say this is the only video that the department will be releasing. The state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is inves- tigating the incident, is col- lecting other video.
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