Jeffrey Dawkins

Jeffrey Dawkins -- Free After 19 Years of Wrongful Incarceration

On July 19, 2024, Jeffrey Dawkins walked free from the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Phoenix. Jeff was just 19 years old when he was wrongfully convicted and would go on to spend the next 19+ years of his life incarcerated. Jeff's devoted family, who fought tirelessly for this outcome, including by investigating Jeff's case for years on their own, waited excitedly to welcome him home. Jeff's top priority is furthering the relationship with his son, Jaylen, who recently graduated high school.

Many thanks to Project Legal Director, Nilam Sanghvi, Amelia Maxfield of the Exoneration Project, Rachel Satinsky of Littler Mendelson P.C., and Tara Param of Holland & Knight LLP. This hard-fought journey has included an extensive team of past and present Project staff members, including Nick Kato and Marissa Bluestine, as well as the Federal Litigation Unit at the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.

How did this happen?

Jeff's Wrongful Arrest and Conviction 

On March 28, 2004, Jeff went to the Name of the Game nightclub in Frankford section of Philadelphia, to hang out with friends. A fight broke out in another part of the club, leading to the shooting of Brian Greene, who managed to leave the club but died outside on the street. Oddly, when police arrived, the club had been cleaned and locked up, forcing officers to break in to investigate.

Witnesses told police that a man named "Meth" shot someone and "Gator" ran out of the club with a gun in his hand. None of the witnesses who police interviewed mentioned Jeff in their initial statements, however, one mentioned that Meth's real name might be Jeff. As the summer went on, police began showing witnesses photos of Jeff as a potential suspect even though he had never gone by the nickname Meth. 

To this day, we do not know why they included Jeff's picture in photo arrays. 

The Commonwealth's first case against Jeff failed, and the charges were dismissed after he had been held for six months. 

On July 25, 2005, Jeff was rearrested for the murder based on an additional weak identification. Police did this even though all of the witnesses who identified Jeff were suspects themselves and even though Donald Williams, Greene's best friend who was also involved in the fight at the club and saw the perpetrators up close, never identified Jeff as being involved. Jeff was tried alongside Jason Perez, who witnesses identified as Gator; a man he had never met before. 

None of the witnesses stood by their police statements implicating Jeff at trial, but the jury still convicted him, and the court sentenced him to life in prison without parole. 

Jeff's quest to prove his innocence...

Jeff has always maintained his innocence. While incarcerated, Jeff spearheaded efforts for his family and loved ones to build awareness for his wrongful conviction. Jeff, his sisters, and mother put together flyers seeking information about the case that they posted around Frankford, and Jeff wrote to hundreds of attorneys, law schools, and other organizations asking for help. 

Among those organizations was the Pennsylvania Innocence Project—Jeff wrote to us when we first opened our doors in 2009, and we began representing him in 2014. Jeff's investigative efforts initially led to recantations by the witnesses who originally identified him. The court heard that the new evidence in his 2015 post-conviction hearings but, unfortunately, denied Jeff's motion for a new trial 

Jeff and his family persisted in the face of these legal setbacks, continuing to post flyers throughout Frankford. In 2021, their efforts to find additional new evidence came to fruition, when two witnesses independently reached out to Jeff's sister stating that they knew neither of the two men on the flyer—Jeff and his co-defendant Jason—were the person they saw shoot at Greene in 2004. Jeff's sister connected the witnesses with our legal team, who interviewed them at length and then filed another post-conviction petition seeking a new trial for Jeff. 

The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office agreed that this new information required an evidentiary hearing. In March 2024, one of those new witnesses testified that he had been at the club on the night of Greene's shooting and both Jeff and Perez were physically smaller and had a different complexion than Greene's shooter. In fact, the new witness said that it had been a club security guard who shot in the direction of the fight that night, which could explain why the club had been cleaned up and locked when police arrived that night. 

Based on the strength of this new evidence, on July 18, 2024, the DA's office joined us in asking the court to grant Jeff's post-conviction petition and vacate his conviction. Ultimately, Jeff made the difficult decision to plead guilty in exchange for immediate release. Although accepting a plea is always a difficult choice, Jeff chose the legal path that would allow him to immediately return home to his family.