Lester’s Story

Lester Eiland -- Free After 25 Years of Wrongful Incarceration

On July 11, 2025, Lester Eiland walked free from SCI Camp Hill. Lester and his co-defendant and childhood friend, Edward Mitchell, have maintained their innocence through 25 years of wrongful incarceration, and both have returned home to Philadelphia to begin new chapters.  

 

Lester first wrote to us 15 years ago, in 2010, just one year after we opened our doors. We are grateful to all Project staff members who have worked on Lester's case over the years, including current team members Nilam Sanghvi, Jonah Rosenbaum, Yvonne Carter, Blanca Castro, and Yahya Moore. Many attorneys from Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP have also worked on this case pro bono for more than a decade, including co-counsel Julia Jacovides and Dana Becker. 



How Did This Happen?

Lester’s Wrongful Arrest and Conviction

On July 5, 2000, taxi driver Angel DeJesus was shot three times while sitting in his cab on a corner in Harrisburg. Police had few leads, and anonymous sources drove the investigation. One told police that they saw two Black men flee the area shortly after gunshots were fired. Another said three Black men from Philadelphia were involved in the crime. Police arrested Lester Eiland, Edward Mitchell, and Kariem Eley, who were from Philadelphia, a few weeks later based only on statements from a few witnesses that the men were in the area of the shooting.  No physical evidence tied any of the men to the crime, and no eyewitnesses ever identified them as being involved.  

 

Lester and his co-defendants endured three separate trials. At the first two trials, the Commonwealth attempted to strengthen its case with testimony from two jailhouse informants. One man testified that he was watching television with Lester in jail when a news report regarding DeJesus’ murder appeared on the screen. He claimed Lester proceeded to jump up and down repeating the phrase, “that was me, that was me.” The other man testified that he and Lester were cellmates and that Lester voluntarily confessed that he was a part of a taxi robbery that went wrong and led to DeJesus’ death. The first trial ended with a hung jury and the second with a mistrial. 

 

At the third trial, the Commonwealth added testimony from an incentivized witness to the mix. This new witness said he was standing in front of his home when saw three Black men standing near DeJesus’ taxicab. He also could not identify any of the three men. Before the trial, the Commonwealth placed the witness in Cumberland County Prison to ensure that he testified, put money in his prison account, and promised him assistance with his green card application.  

 

This time, the jury convicted Lester and his co-defendants of second-degree murder, robbery, and criminal conspiracy. The Commonwealth used testimony from jailhouse informants and incentivized witnesses to secure this conviction – precisely the kind of unreliable evidence known to lead to wrongful convictions. According to data from the National Registry of Exonerations, perjury or false accusations are involved in 64% of wrongful convictions that have led to known exonerations across the US since tracking began in 1989.

Lester’s Quest to Prove His Innocence

Lester and his co-defendants exhausted their appeals and hoped for new evidence to corroborate their innocence. Favorable evidence, some of which was available but not thoroughly investigated before the trial began to emerge. Most significantly, it became known that another man had been arrested with the same firearm used in DeJesus’ murder. He said that he gotten the gun from his brother, who then said he got the weapon from a man who was charged with armed robberies similar to this case and in the same neighborhood. Another man was later convicted of similar armed robbery to the DeJesus murder that occurred at the same intersection just the day before. Police did not investigate any of these leads, and post-conviction motions for new trials based on this evidence were unsuccessful.  

In the following years, both witnesses who claimed to have seen Lester, Edward, and Kariem near the crime scene recanted their testimony. One witness claimed that he testified falsely because police pressured him related to a pending charge of his own. This still did not lead to relief for the men.  

 

In 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit granted Kariem post-conviction relief due to a constitutional error at trial that affected him. In doing so, the court noted the weakness of the evidence in this case. Ultimately, Kariem made the difficult decision to plead guilty to lesser charges to resolve his case and return home, rather than risk facing another trial.  

 

The Project began an in-depth review of Lester’s case in 2013. In 2015, a team of attorneys from Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP worked with us to complete the review, and our Case Review Committee approved the Project’s representation of Lester. With Morgan Lewis as pro bono co-counsel, we asked the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office to agree to conduct DNA testing on crime scene evidence using technology not available at the time of the trials, which they did. The testing excluded Lester and Edward as the sources of DNA found on that evidence. Most significantly, it showed that Lester was not the source of male DNA found on a shell casing, contradicting the informants’ claims that he confessed to being the shooter.  

 

With this new evidence, Lester and his legal team filed a petition for post-conviction relief in January 2025. Attorneys for Edward did the same. 

 

Rather than opposing the petitions, and in recognition of the weaknesses in the Commonwealth’s case, the Dauphin County District Attorney’s office offered both men the opportunity to resolve their cases with Alford pleas to lesser charges and to return home immediately. An Alford plea is a particular type of plea by which the convicted person maintains their innocence while acknowledging that the government had evidence to secure their conviction. 

 

Both Lester and Edward made the difficult decision to accept those pleas so that they can put their 25-year journey through wrongful incarceration behind them and begin re-joining their community and loved ones. We are proud to support them with reentry services as they enter this new phase.