Just after 1 a.m. on June 22, 2008, 26-year-old Nathaniel Crawford was shot in the back and abdomen outside the University City Townhouses in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He died a short while later at the nearby Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
University police, known as Penn Police, heard the shots and quickly responded, following a Chevrolet Impala and stopping the car three blocks away in front of a 7-Eleven. The officers ordered 22-year-old Tyree Musier, 22-year-old Jonte Slater, and 14-year-old Hafees Alston out of the car. They were handcuffed and made to sit in a parking lot. Slater had been driving, Musier in the front seat, and Alston in the back.
At the crime scene, officers with the Philadelphia Police Department interviewed potential witnesses, including 14-year-old Latasha Austin and 22-year-old Terrell Lewis, who said they believed the shooter was wearing a lime-green polo shirt.
Penn Police Officer Nicola Depallo was waiting with Musier and the others when he heard this information over the police radio and would later testify that he found a shirt matching that description on center of the car’s front seat. When Lewis and Austin arrived, the officer held the shirt up against Musier, the largest of the three individuals.
Both witnesses then identified Musier as the shooter. He and Slater were both charged with murder. Police released Alston.
During the short chase, the police had seen a gun tossed out of the car. They recovered a .40-caliber Glock and .40-caliber shell casings near the shooting.
At the police station, Austin and Lewis gave formal statements. Austin said that two men got out of the car at 39 th and Market streets, while another person stayed in the car. She said that a heavy guy in a green shirt shot Crawford. She also said the shooter had “braids in his hair,” which was consistent with Musier’s appearance.
Lewis gave a similar statement, also saying that the man in the green shirt had shot Crawford. He also told the police that the shooter was heavy and had cornrows.
On December 9, 2008, Austin testified at a preliminary hearing that she saw Musier, in a green shirt, shoot and kill Crawford. Slater wasn’t involved, she said. Lewis did not testify, because he had used a fake name at the crime scene and the police station. (He later made a second statement under his correct name in June 2009.) A judge dismissed the murder charge against Slater that day.
Slater was shot to death on November 5, 2009. His murder remains unsolved.
Musier waived his right to a jury trial, and his bench trial, before Judge Shelley Robins New, began in the Philadelphia County Court of Common on February 6, 2012. During its opening statement, the prosecution said that Lewis had falsely identified himself in his statement to police. Musier’s attorney, Daniel Alva, moved for a mistrial, asserting prosecutors had not told him of Lewis’s deception. The state conceded that it had not disclosed this information but said a continuance rather than a mistrial, was the proper remedy.
Judge New said the state’s failure to disclose was unintentional. She denied the mistrial and granted a continuance. She also said that based on what she had heard, “the case should appropriately be heard as a jury [trial].”
The jury trial began on April 16, 2012.
The state’s theory was that Musier, Slater, and Alston had gone to the townhouses to conduct a drug deal, and that Slater had remained in the car while Musier and Alston got out and talked with a young woman. They then argued with Crawford, and Musier, wearing the green shirt, shot him four times.
The defense’s theory was that Musier had stayed in the car, while Alston and Slater got out and had words with Crawford, prior to Slater shooting him.
Lewis testified that he and Crawford and others had been selling drugs near the townhouses when two men approached. One man wore a green shirt, the other a black shirt. Lewis said that Crawford spoke with the man in the black shirt and had turned to leave when the man in the green shirt pulled out a gun and shot him.
Lewis said he did not see the shooter’s face, and that he only identified Musier at the show-up identification because an officer had placed Musier beside the green shirt found in the car.
Lewis testified that when he gave his initial statement on the morning of the shooting, “I told the police that the green shirt looked like the one that the guy with the braids/cornrows in his hair was wearing and the officer held the shirt up to that guy and that was him. The guy I saw shoot Nate.” But he testified that the statement, which he signed, was false. He said the officers never held the shirt up against Musier. He said the shirt was on the ground and the police never picked it up. Lewis testified that he didn’t correct his statement because at the time he had several outstanding warrants and was in a hurry to leave the police station before officers discovered his real identity.
By the time of the trial, Austin had recanted her statements and pre-trial testimony, telling then-Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Bretschneider on October 27, 2010, that it was Slater who shot Crawford. Austin testified that she initially identified Musier because she did not know him but knew Slater, who lived “three doors down,” and she was “worried about [her] family.”
Austin testified that she recanted because it was “eating her up real bad that an innocent guy was in jail.” Her statements to police as well as her testimony at the preliminary hearing were read into the record. Austin also testified that although Slater was the shooter, it was Musier who wore the green shirt.
During cross-examination, Austin said that she had initially identified Musier because she felt threatened by Slater’s friends and family. She also said that there had been no explicit threat. Austin also testified that no one had approached her on Musier’s behalf.
On re-direct, the prosecutor asked Austin whether she had contacted the police after the preliminary hearing about threats she had received from an unknown woman who Austin believed was acting on Musier’s behalf. Austin testified she had no recollection of the incident. Austin’s mother testified that her daughter told her that after the preliminary hearing that she had been “threatened by the guy that she was testifying against at that particular time by some girl or something like that.”
Bretschneider had left the district attorney’s office in 2011. She testified that Austin’s recantation occurred when Bretschneider visited the girl at a juvenile detention facility to update her on the case. Bretschneider said she had quickly told Alva about Austin’s statement.
A medical examiner testified that Crawford had been shot four times. A police officer testified that bullet fragments recovered in the autopsy were consistent with bullets fired from the Glock.
Depallo testified that he found the green shirt on the front seat of the car after hearing the broadcast. Depallo said that he held the shirt, a size XXL, next to Musier because he believed Musier was the only person the shirt appeared to fit. Depallo also said that Musier never came in direct contact with the shirt during this period.
During cross-examination, Depallo said that he failed to mention his role in the show-up identification to the detectives who took his statement on the morning of the shooting. Alva asked Depallo why he omitted these details, and Depallo said that he didn’t know.
Gamal Emira, a forensic scientist with the Philadelphia Police Department, testified that the front of the green shirt tested positive for gunshot residue. During cross-examination, he said that the police didn’t test either Slater or Musier for gunshot residue on their hands.
Bryne Strother, a forensic scientist with the police department’s DNA Laboratory, testified about DNA samples taken from the gun and its magazine. She said that Slater and Musier were excluded as contributors to DNA found on the gun and the magazine. Alston was excluded as a contributor to the gun DNA but could not be excluded as a contributor to the magazine DNA.
Strother testified that Slater could not be excluded as a contributor to DNA found on the shirt’s collar, under the arms, and on the “neck area.” Musier could not be excluded as a contributor to DNA found on the “neck area.” She told the jury that “not excluded” meant the same thing as “included.”
Strother also testified that she did not choose the areas on the shirt to be tested and that the testing she and others performed didn’t distinguish between genetic material found in sweat or skin cells.
During his closing argument, Alva said the evidence pointed toward Slater as the shooter. More of his DNA was on the shirt, including under the arms, and he was carrying $6,700 in cash when he was arrested, indicating that the shooting might have involved drugs. Slater also weighed around 200 pounds, which Alva said refuted testimony that he was too small to have worn such a large shirt. Alva also said there were problems with the evidentiary chain of custody, including the handling of the shirt.
The prosecutor said that the initial statements by Lewis and Austin clearly identified Musier as the shooter. Slater’s DNA on the shirt was a red herring, he said. “It’s at the time of the murder that we care about,” the prosecutor said. “I don’t care if it was Jonte’s shirt. I don’t care if he wore it 10,000 times. At the time of the murder [Musier] was wearing it. She told you that.”
The jury convicted Musier of first-degree murder and two weapons charges on April 25, 2012. He received a sentence of life in prison.
Musier appealed, arguing that there had been insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction and that Judge New erred by not declaring a mistrial and then forcing him to proceed to a jury trial.
The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the conviction on August 14, 2014. It said that the jury had sufficient evidence and that Musier had not objected to Judge New’s decision to require a jury trial at the time she ruled on the matter.
On April 21, 2015, Musier filed a petition for post-conviction relief, asserting that Alva had been ineffective at trial when he asked Austin about any threats she had received about her testimony, because that “opened the door” to the prosecutor questioning Austin about purported threats made by Musier’s supporters.
The trial court dismissed the petition. Musier appealed, and the Superior Court of Pennsylvania again affirmed his conviction on August 9, 2022. It said that Musier was unable to show that Alva’s actions had prejudiced him because of the substantial evidence of guilt presented by the state.
On July 10, 2023, Musier filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The petition repeated many of the earlier claims made in state court but also said that the state had failed to disclose benefits on open cases that Lewis received in exchange for his testimony.
The Philadelphia County District Attorney’s Office began preparing a response to the habeas petition, which included a review of its own files.
The review turned up a memo by Bretschneider on June 29, 2011, written as she was preparing to leave the prosecutor’s office for a teaching position.
“This case needs a lot of attention,” Bretschneider wrote. The memo outlined the shooting and some of the evidentiary issues, including Austin’s recantation. It also referenced Slater’s murder and said that “one of the witnesses in [that] case says that word on the street is he committed the murder near Penn and was letting Tyree take the fall.”
Bretschneider also wrote: “I started to listen to prison calls, but an intern will need to help out. So far Tyree Musier is telling his mom that he was on his way to the car, and something went wrong, and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
In a response dated November 18, 2023, the state did not take a position on Musier’s claims but said that a judge should appoint an attorney to represent him in federal court.
A judge appointed Thomas Dreyer to represent Musier, and he and the state executed a file-sharing agreement that revealed other evidence pointing to Slater as the real shooter. On May 10, 2024, a judge granted Dreyer’s motion to stay the habeas petition so that Musier could pursue these claims in state court.
Now represented by Daniel Silverman, Musier filed a second motion for post-conviction relief on November 10, 2024, that contained statements from witnesses and others pointing to Musier’s innocence. These included:
A statement from Alston that said Musier had stayed in the car while he and Slater got out near the townhouses to drop off Slater’s younger brother. Alston said Slater got into an argument with Crawford and then shot him. Alston said Slater was wearing the lime green shirt but removed it while he drove away.
A statement from Austin that said Slater’s associates threatened her and offered her $2,000 to falsely implicate Musier. “At the time of the preliminary hearing, I did what I thought I had to do and lie that it was Tyree and not Jonte, who killed Nate,” she said.
A statement from Marquise Astillero, who said he had seen Slater shoot Crawford after a brief argument. He was 12 years old at the time. He said the person he later learned was Musier never got out of the car.
A statement from Jerrica Rogers, Slater’s former girlfriend, who said Slater confessed to her that he shot Crawford. “He told me that the cops knew that the shooter had been wearing a green shirt,” Rogers said. “He told me that when they were in the holding cell together that night, Tyree was telling Jonte that this wasn’t right, that he had to be detained even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. Jonte told me that he kept telling Tyree that he had kids, and he couldn’t take responsibility for the case.” Rogers, like several others, said that Slater was a flashy dresser, owned a lime green shirt, and liked to wear his clothes on the bigger size.
Lewis said in his statement that he never got a good look at the shooter’s face. “This is not a situation where I identified the correct person and got scared and wanted to take that back,” he said. “No one has put any pressure on me at all to take back my identification. I just thought the guy I identified was the shooter because I thought the green shirt next to him was his.” Lewis also said that a homicide detective offered to help him on several open cases if he cooperated on the Crawford murder.
Beyond Lewis’s assertion involving the homicide detective, Musier’s petition also said the state had failed to turn over exculpatory evidence found in the police department’s file on the Slater murder, as referenced in Bretschneider’s memo. There, a witness named Bonnnie Griffin had told police that she had heard that Slater shot Crawford over a drug debt. She said in a 2024 statement that she talked to the police in 2010 and told detectives that Musier was in jail for something he didn’t do. “Jonte was a serious hothead,” she said. “He even beat up his own father and stepmother. He had a whole lot of enemies.”
Another potential witness in the Slater murder, David Powell, said he told police that he was with Slater, Musier, and Alston on the night of Crawford’s murder, and that Slater was drinking and wearing a bright-green shirt.
Silverman amended the motion on May 13, 2025, after the state disclosed that an assistant district attorney had discovered a CD-ROM in March 2025 that contained recordings of eight months of Slater’s jail calls from the time of his arrest until his release after the preliminary hearing. There were no accompanying notes. The state would later say that it appeared that the recordings had been ordered, but never listened to, and never disclosed.
According to the recordings:
In a call placed on July 9, 2008, Slater told Rogers the police “put the green shirt on Ty.” He later said, “My green polo shirt. They was like, ‘We got him. This the guy right here.’ They put the green shirt on him—remember that green polo shirt? They put it on Ty.”
In a call placed on July 10, 2008, Slater told Rogers that it was important that the witnesses come to court and say it wasn’t him. “They can get a check if they come down here and say it ain’t me. I’ll give them a check when I come home. That’s another thing. Y’all want a check? Y’all can get a check.”
On July 12, 2008, Slater told Rogers that people “need to start talking to [Austin] again and that’s what will get me home fast … I just want them to show up and say it ain’t us.” Slater said he would offer “a thousand dollars apiece” for each witness to say it wasn’t him. He said the money would be to “show up and say it ain’t us.”
On a second call from July 12, 2008, Slater joked that the green shirt was his favorite, and he was never going to get it back. “If I win, I’m definitely going to ask for it back. Then they going to know it was my shirt the whole time. I’m gonna be like, ‘Well, it wasn’t the big guy’s shirt.’ Now that it’s over, it wasn’t his shirt.”
In a response filed on August 20, 2025, the state agreed that Musier deserved a new trial based on the undisclosed jail recordings.
“Here, in the suppressed calls, Slater places himself outside of the car, discusses his ownership of the green shirt, and plans to pay witnesses, including Austin, in exchange for favorable testimony at this preliminary hearing,” the state said. “Disclosure of this evidence could have not just supported Austin’s recantation and called the prosecution’s theory of the case into question, as well as the overall investigation, but also could have led the defense to uncover witnesses such as Jerrica Rogers, who said that Slater confessed to her and that she knew of the scheme to pay witnesses for Slater.”
The state said in its response that it took no position on Musier’s actual innocence. The assistant district attorney who led the state’s prosecution of Musier in 2012 said he had no knowledge of the recordings.
Judge Jennifer Schultz granted Musier’s motion for a new trial on August 22, 2025. Musier remained incarcerated.
On September 16, 2025, Judge J. Scott O’Keefe granted a motion by the state to dismiss the case. He told Musier that he was free.
At the hearing, Assistant District Attorney David Napiorski said, “I cannot say with 100 percent certainty that he didn’t commit the shooting, I just think it’s probable he didn’t commit the shooting.”
Musier now uses a wheelchair because of pain in his legs and back and had been in the hospital for kidney issues. His sister said he had not been getting the care he needed while in prison.
Musier’s mother, Annette Musier, saw her son in person for the first time in nine years. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, her poor health prevented her from making the six-hour drive to see Musier at the prison in western Pennsylvania.
“It’s been so long,” she said, crying. “My son.”
In February 2026, Musier filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia and police officers involved in his case.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 10-02-2025
Last Update Date: 05-03-2026
