People Magazine Investigates TV - CNN online
1971: Without a body, he [Greg Harris] remains a missing person’s case … Greg’s brother Alex actually skips town. People Magazine Investigates s4e12: Motor City Murder: Double Crossed in Detroit
The police didn’t question anybody. And it doesn’t sound like they made much effort to go out and look for him. ibid. attorney
A quick assessment of the body tells police this was no accident. ibid.
Richard Phillips and Richard Palombo were charged in the Greg Harris case. ibid.
Palombo finally told the truth. ibid.
Wrongly convicted for 47 years. ibid.
Forty-six years later, legal observers would say Richard Phillips had served the longest known wrongful prison sentence in American history. The National Registry of Exonerations lists more than 2,500 people who were convicted of crimes and later found innocent, and Phillips served more time than anyone else on that list. Undoubtedly, the justice system failed him. The police failed. The prosecution failed. His defense attorney failed. The jury failed. The trial judge failed. The appellate judges failed …
Here’s how it began: On September 6, 1971, two men walked into a convenience store outside Detroit. The black man stood watch near the door. The white man pulled a gun and demanded money. They drove off with less than $10 in stolen cash. An alert citizen noticed the car driving erratically and called the police. The registration came back to Richard Palombo, also known as Dago, who had stayed the previous night with Mitchell and Phillips at the Twenty Grand Motel in Detroit.
Palombo knew he was caught; he would plead guilty to armed robbery. But who was his accomplice? Phillips and Mitchell were both detained shortly after Palombo was. The two men looked similar. In a lineup at the station, two witnesses looked them over. They agreed that the second robber was Richard Phillips.
At Phillips’ trial in November, Palombo took the witness stand and told the jury how he committed the robbery. The prosecutor asked who else was there.
‘I don’t want to mention the name,’ Palombo said ..
His silence about the crimes of 1971 would stretch out for 39 years, with disastrous consequences …
The jurors deliberated for four hours before finding Palombo and Phillips guilty of conspiracy to murder and first-degree murder. Before handing down a sentence of life in prison, the judge asked Phillips if he had anything to say.
‘Not necessarily, your honor,’ Phillips said, ‘except for the fact that I was not guilty, you know, even though I was found guilty. And it’s not too much can be done about it right now to correct the injustice already, so all I can do is just, you know, wait until something develops in my favor.’ CNN online article