At 12:46 p.m. on February 2, 1987, police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, received a call about a shooting on West York Street. They found Mario Martinez lying on his back on the second-floor landing. A woman was on top of Martinez, sobbing. The woman identified herself as Rosa Diaz, and she said she was Martinez’s girlfriend.
Martinez was pronounced dead at a local hospital at 1:32 p.m.
The Philadelphia Police Department’s Mobile Crime Scene Unit processed the building and found two projectiles: one in the kitchen door on the first floor; the other in a bathroom wall on the second floor. A third bullet was found inside Martinez during his autopsy. Police also found a pair of leather gloves on the second floor.
Police interviewed several men who lived in the boarding house. They each said they had been in their rooms, heard gunshots and the sound of running, but didn’t see anyone involved in the shooting. Two of the men said Martinez kicked open a door on the third floor and called for help before falling down the stairs to the second floor.
Diaz’s real name was Rosemary Morales. She initially told officers that she only heard the shots. Then she said she was with Martinez and saw the shooter from the side. She described the shooter as a Black man, wearing a gray hat, a green army jacket, jeans, and brown boots. She told several officers she had never seen the man before.
An officer took Morales to the department’s homicide division, and Detective Jeff Piree began questioning her at 2:30 p.m. Morales first said that Martinez had just returned from the store when she heard a shot. She said she opened the door to her unit and saw from behind a man running up the stairs. She said he was Black, 30-35 years old, 6 feet tall, 170 lbs., with black curly hair with gray on the sides. She also said the man was wearing silver-rimmed glasses, an army jacket, “Sergio” jeans, and work boots.
In this first statement, Morales said she was hiding behind the door during the shooting and did not look out into the hallway until the man ran past.
During the interview, Morales said that Martinez had gotten into an argument three days earlier with the man who ran up the stairs. She said his nickname was “Daoul.”
Morales now gave a different account of the shooting. She said she was in an upstairs apartment, freebasing cocaine, when Martinez asked her to help him sell some drugs. She said Daoul entered the building and offered to buy drugs, but he and Martinez couldn’t agree on the price, so Daoul took out a gun and shot at him. The first shot missed, Morales said, but Martinez was shot on the third floor. She said she then saw Daoul run down the stairs. She said he pointed a gun at her and said, “Bitch, if you tell, I kill you too.” (Morales had not mentioned any threat made by the shooter in her initial statements to police.)
Morales told Piree that Daoul lived a few blocks away, on North Orianna Street.
Piree and other detectives went looking for Daoul, with Morales hiding in the back of an unmarked police car. Morales first pointed out a man she identified as Daoul’s cousin, but the police were unable to arrest him. Then, she pointed out the man she knew as Daoul, and police arrested 29-year-old David Turner, whose nickname was “Dawud.”
At the time of his arrest, Turner was wearing black corduroy pants, a red shirt, a dark blue down jacket, a dark-colored knit cap, and brown boots. He had brown hair and was not wearing glasses. The police did not find the murder weapon or any clothing matching Morales’s description at his house. (They did find a non-working BB gun and a fake gun made of wood and metal wrapped with black tape.) The police interviewed a woman who lived at Turner’s residence. She said that she and Turner had bought drugs at the building where Morales lived but not from Martinez.
Piree and another detective interviewed Turner at 10 p.m. on February 2, after his arrest. He denied any involvement in the shooting. He was charged with murder and possessing instruments of a crime.
Morales failed to show up for Turner’s preliminary hearing on February 11. A friend told detectives that Morales’s grandmother had received a telephone call a week earlier that said Morales would be killed if she talked.
Morales was arrested the next day and charged with being an absconding witness. She told the police that she did not want to testify. She also said a man was waiting inside her apartment when police dropped her off in the early morning of Feb. 3, after Turner’s arrest. She said the man threatened to kill her if she testified.
The Philadelphia County District Attorney’s office successfully petitioned the court to grant Morales immunity from prosecution, and she appeared at Turner’s preliminary hearing on February 26, 1987.
Morales testified that she was inside her apartment when she heard a shot. She testified that she identified Turner, “but, like I say, I wasn’t that sure. I only took a back look of the guy.”
Assistant District Attorney Barbara Buba asked Morales if she remembered telling Piree about Daoul shooting Martinez. Morales said she was high at the time. “I just got finished freebasing,” she said. “I don’t remember that statement.”
Morales testified that she had been afraid the police might blame her for the shooting.
After Morales testified, her attorney and George Newman, Turner’s attorney, asked Buba about the absconding charge. Buba said she hadn’t yet decided how to proceed in that case.
Piree testified that Morales did not appear to be on drugs when she was interviewed. He said she cried, but not “hysterically.”
After the hearing, a judge set Turner’s bail at $250,000, and Buba dismissed the absconding charge against Morales.
Prior to trial in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Newman filed an omnibus motion to suppress Turner’s statement to police and Morales’s identification. At a pre-trial hearing on the motion before Judge John Poserina Jr. on March 29, 1988, Assistant District Attorney Andrea Foulkes said that the state was considering seeking the death penalty against Turner.
The next day, before jury selection, Newman said he was withdrawing his motion “and in exchange the District Attorney has agreed not to pursue the issue of death qualification.”
Morales was the state’s main witness, and she testified that the shooting happened because Martinez, whom she called Cheeno, refused to sell Turner $20 of drugs for $18.50.
She said Turner left, then returned and began firing. “Cheeno tried to get away. But when he got upstairs—I can’t talk […] when the first shot came, he tried to get away. He run upstairs to the second floor. But he couldn’t get away because the window upstairs was locked. So, I just heard something fell [sic] down the steps, okay. By the time I heard the steps and come back, somebody ran down. I didn’t know if it was [Cheeno] or Daoul. But when I went up to them, he was laying right there.”
Morales testified that she was hiding inside her apartment when the shots were fired and that she did not see Turner’s face. “Well, I ain’t seen no face, but I could remember voices,” Morales said. “I don’t got to see the face to remember your voice.”
Morales later said that she saw Turner through a small cigarette burn hole in the curtain that covered her front door.
She testified that after the shooting, she looked out her door and saw a man in the neighboring lot. She said that man was Turner, and he threatened to shoot her if she talked to the police.
Morales testified that she lied at the preliminary hearing about being high and not remembering the statement she gave to the police. She denied being charged as an absconding witness. She denied being granted immunity but later said she didn’t remember.
Morales said she used, bought, and sold cocaine. She said she was freebasing at the time of the shooting, but that cocaine made her more alert and didn’t impair her memory.
The .38-caliber slug removed from Martinez’s body had been compared against the two slugs found at the crime scene. The police department’s Firearms Identification Unit was unable to say that the projectiles came from the same weapon, only that they were sufficiently “consistent, from the lands and groove markings, to have come from a similar firearm.”
Officer Brenda Butler testified that based on the trajectory of the bullets, it was her belief that the shooter fired up the stairwell from the first floor, then moved up the stairs towards the second floor before firing the second shot.
Dr. Robert Catherman, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy, did not testify. But a colleague, Dr. Halbert Fillinger, read parts of the report to the jury. Fillinger said that Catherman found that the bullet that killed Martinez, which struck him in the front of his chest, traveled backwards “from above, downward, from front to back, and slightly to the right.” During cross-examination, Newman asked if the shooter would have had to have been “a bit above” Martinez or Martinez would have had to “have been leaning forward and facing the individual?”
Fillinger said, “Those are two of the possibilities that could exist.”
Officer Kenneth Brown testified that he was one of the first officers to respond to the shooting. He said that Morales told him that she was standing with Martinez when a man came up and fired shots, and she could only see him from the side.
Officer Donald Woodruff testified that he had arrested Morales numerous times. He said that Morales had told him she knew who shot Martinez and where the shooter lived. On cross-examination, Woodruff admitted that Morales had not told him about the gunman’s location; he had learned that from other detectives.
Several officers testified there were no lights in the second-floor hallway and that they needed flashlights to see.
Detective Thomas Hoffner read to the jury the statement Turner made to the police. Hoffner testified that after Turner made the statement, he told Turner about Morales’s identification. He said Turner “got nervous and he slumped down in the chair. He wouldn’t look at me after that point.”
Piree testified about his interview with Morales, which he said took about two hours. (Other records said the interview took place over more than five hours.) He said he never considered Morales a suspect and never suggested to her that she was.
Piree also testified that Morales didn’t appear to be under the influence of drugs. He said she was nervous and upset. “She cried a few times. She was a little bit frightened. She was coherent, sober, aware of where she was, what we were talking about. She had full control of her faculties.”
Buba, the prosecutor from the preliminary hearing, testified that she had an unrecorded conversation with Morales, her attorney, and two police officers before that hearing. Buba said she asked Morales whether she could identify Turner as the person who shot Martinez. Buba said Morales said she could. Buba’s account closely matched the final statement Piree obtained from Morales.
During cross-examination, Newman asked Buba whether she reported this conversation to the police to memorialize the statement. Buba said she didn’t.
Newman asked Buba what led her to believe that Morales was telling the truth. Buba said, “That’s just based on my personal opinion and beliefs.”
Newman then moved for a mistrial based on improper vouching by Buba. Judge Poserina denied the motion.
Turner did not testify. Newman presented one witness, Officer Christina Goodwin, one of the first officers to respond. Goodwin testified that Morales, who was “terribly hysterical and sobbing,” told her that she had never seen the shooter before and merely described him as a “Black male with light skin.”
The parties also stipulated to a statement by Officer Jude McKenna, another first responder. His statement said, “[Morales] told us that it was a Black male wearing a green army jacket, dungarees, green knit hat and silver or gold-rimmed glasses. I asked her if she knew who he was, and she said she never saw him before in her life.”
During his closing argument, Newman said Morales implicated Turner after Piree began considering her a suspect. He said that she had admitted lying and only cooperated with police to resolve her other cases. “It really comes down to Rosa,” he said. “Can you accept the word of that woman in order to convict him of murder and possession of an instrument of crime?”
Newman also said that Morales’s initial description of the shooter’s attire didn’t match Turner’s appearance at the time of his arrest. He also said that her account of the shooting was at odds with the medical examiner’s findings on the trajectory of the bullet that killed Martinez.
Foulkes said in her closing argument that Morales was conflicted because she wanted to see her partner’s murder brought to justice but was also scared because of the threats she received. Morales was an imperfect witness from a less-than-perfect place, Foulkes said.
“Now, ladies and gentleman, if a crime such as murder is committed in a monastery, there are holy men who would come forward to testify as to what happened with regards to that crime. But when, an expression I think may be well-known to you, when a crime is committed in such a circumstance as this, when you must prosecute the devil, you often have to go to hell for your witnesses. Now, I suggest to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the world that Rosa Morales lives in is about as close to hell as we know on earth. And she must be regarded in light of the world that she comes from.”
After Foulkes finished her argument, Newman moved for a mistrial. Among his complaints, Newman said that Foulkes had compared Turner to the devil, told the jury twice that Morales was pregnant (which was not introduced as evidence), commented on Turner’s silence during his interview with police, and placed an unconstitutional burden on Turner by telling the jury the defense did not want to get at the truth. Judge Poserina denied the motion.
The jury began deliberations at around noon April 7, 1988. It asked to see several pieces of evidence, including statements to the police made by Morales and Turner. Later, the jury asked to review Morales’s testimony. Judge Poserina declined that request but noted that Morales was “the key witness in the case.”
At the end of the first day of deliberations, the jury told Judge Poserina that it was hopelessly deadlocked. Newman moved again for a mistrial or for additional jury instructions. Judge Poserina denied the requests and sent the jury to a hotel for the night.
After the deadlock, the state offered Turner a deal that would require him to serve between five and 10 years in prison, with credit for time served. Turner rejected the offer.
The next day, the jury quickly convicted Turner of second-degree murder and the weapons charge. Judge Poserina sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
Over the next 24 years, Turner, often representing himself, challenged his convictions through a series of appeals, petitions for post-conviction relief, and petitions for writs of habeas corpus in state and federal court. Judges denied his motions.
In 2012, Turner, now represented by the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, moved for DNA testing on the leather gloves found at the crime scene. The state opposed the request, but a judge granted Turner’s motion. The testing, performed in 2013, was inconclusive.
In May 2023, the district attorney’s office released the police department’s homicide file and its own files to Turner’s attorneys.
The files included records not disclosed to Newman that documented Morales’s precarious mental health in the days after the shooting.
According to the records, the police returned to Morales’s apartment on February 5, 1987. The building’s owner told officers that Morales had moved out the day before and that he found a suicide note that Morales had left for her mother. “Please do for my [kids] what I couldn’t [do] for them,” she wrote. On the last page was a drawing of Morales hanging herself.
On February 12, after Morales didn’t appear at Turner’s preliminary hearing, the police found Morales at an apartment in north Philadelphia. During an interview at the Homicide Division, Morales said she was going to commit suicide. The police also learned that Morales had outstanding bench warrants under another name as well as a probation violation. After her arrest for failing to appear and absconding, a prosecutor made a “high bail” request and asked for a psychiatric examination. Morales was placed on suicide watch and held until she testified at Turner’s preliminary hearing on February 26, 1987.
The district attorney’s office files on the case contained a report on Morales’s suicidal statements. Newman had filed a discovery request asking for any evidence that would reflect on the credibility of the state’s witnesses, but he was not provided with these records.
The prosecutor files also included a memo from Foulkes dated March 29, 1988, asking for a supervisor’s approval to seek the death penalty and the supervisor’s response, also from that day, rejecting the idea. On March 30, when Newman withdrew his suppression motion as part of a deal to prevent the state from seeking the death penalty, he did not know that capital punishment was already off the table.
Turner’s attorneys—Nilam Sanghvi, with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, Amelia Maxfield, with the Exoneration Project, and Thomas Hazlett and Emily Horwitz, with the Ballard Spahr law firm—filed a new motion for post-conviction relief on April 29, 2024.
The motion said: “These revelations about the true extent of Morales’ mental and emotional condition at the time go to the heart of the Commonwealth’s prosecution of Turner. Morales’ credibility as an eyewitness was the key, indeed, the only, issue at Turner’s trial. By withholding the recently revealed information regarding Morales, the Commonwealth deprived Turner of crucial information that he could have used to challenge Morales’ identification of Turner as the shooter and to impeach the police investigation.”
The motion also said that Foulkes had misled the court about her authority to seek the death penalty against Turner. “The consideration Turner received for dropping his meritorious suppression motion—especially with respect to Morales’ statements—was the Commonwealth giving up its right to pursue the death penalty in the case,” the motion said. “This risk turned out to be illusory, and the prosecutor engaged in misconduct by threatening it.”
On June 7, 2024, Turner filed a new petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania that asserted the claims made in his state petition.
After Turner filed these motions, the district attorney’s office, including its Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), reviewed the case. In 2025, during the review, Morales recanted her testimony and denied seeing the shooter or knowing who the shooter was.
The CIU turned this information over to Turner’s attorneys, who amended their motion on August 29, 2025, to include the recantation by Morales. In a separate, sworn statement from April 10, 2025, Morales said: “I was getting high in the kitchen. I heard the shooting but did not see it. I froze. I stayed in the house for 10 or 15 minutes. I then came outside and left the building … I saw a Black guy leave the building from upstairs, among other people. I have no idea who he was, had not seen him before, and did not recognize him as the defendant at trial. I did not recognize the defendant as someone who came out of the building after the shooting.”
According to Morales, the police pressured her to identify Turner. She said: “The police locked me up before trial. I did not know what was going on and was scared. I felt beholden to the narcotics officers and police because they gave me drugs and I was an addict. I felt like I had to do what they told me.”
On November 12, 2025, Turner amended his petition a second time. Along with the state’s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence and Morales’s recantation, the motion said prosecutors had turned over information that called into question Piree’s credibility.
“Detective Piree has been identified by the [District Attorney’s Office] as an officer who may have or has engaged in misconduct that necessitates disclosure,” the district attorney’s office said.
In the case of Chester Hollman III, who was exonerated in 2019, two key witnesses recanted their testimony and claimed that Piree threatened and coerced them to implicate Hollman. In the case of John Miller, who also was exonerated in 2019, the main witness recanted before trial and said Piree had threatened him and provided details of the crime. Piree testified and refuted the recantation.
Turner’s amended petition said, “The evidence of Detective Piree’s misconduct in other investigations in which innocent people were wrongly charged with and convicted of homicide due to his tactics only adds to the strength of Turner’s innocence claim.”
In a response filed December 8, 2025, the state, although not conceding that Turner had proven his innocence, agreed that Turner deserved a new trial, based on the undisclosed evidence of Morales’s mental health, her recantation, and the evidence of Piree’s misconduct in similar cases.
“Everything at this trial came down to Morales and her statements and testimony,” the response said. “Morales’s credibility was the essential issue and her testimony lacked consistency and corroboration by physical evidence. Therefore, any evidence further undercutting Morales’s credibility, or undercutting the credibility of the detective who took her statement identifying Turner, undercuts confidence in the verdict.”
On December 10, 2025, Judge Jennifer Schultz granted Turner’s petition, vacated his convictions, and then granted the state’s motion to dismiss the case. Turner was released from custody that day.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 12-23-2025
