Philadelphia officers named in PCRA petitions: what the courts have actually found
Convictions built on the work of an officer whose credibility later collapsed can sometimes be reopened, but only within the PCRA's deadlines and only with the right showing. This reference collects what the courts have said about each officer whose name recurs in Philadelphia petitions: what was found, disclosed, charged, or acquitted; the petitions that succeeded and the ones that failed; and the dates courts have used to start the one-year clock. Where no court has found misconduct, the page says so.
By John A. Julian, Esq. Updated October 1, 2026.
Every statement on these pages is drawn from a court opinion, a court order, or an official disclosure described in a court opinion, with the case cited. Where a court characterized something as an allegation, so do we. Where an officer was acquitted, that is stated. These pages are a record of the litigation, not a verdict on anyone.
Most of these petitions rest on Brady v. Maryland, the rule that the prosecution must disclose favorable evidence, including evidence known to its police. Two rules run through all of it. First, under Commonwealth v. Castro, 93 A.3d 818 (Pa. 2014), a newspaper article about an officer is not evidence; a petition must describe the evidence that will be presented at a hearing. Second, the Superior Court has repeatedly held that an officer's misconduct in someone else's case is not, by itself, a newly discovered fact in yours. The petition must connect the officer's conduct to the petitioner's own case, and it must be filed within one year of when the misconduct became publicly known, not of when the petitioner heard about it. Those two rules explain most of the denials below, and the winning cases show what it takes to satisfy them.
Officers, with the status of the record on each
Philip Nordo
Philip Nordo was dismissed from the Philadelphia Police Department in 2017 and convicted in 2022 of crimes committed against witnesses and informants in homicide cases he investigated. His cases have produced several vacated convictions by Commonwealth agreement and a long line of Superior Court decisions holding that his misconduct in other cases does not restart the PCRA clock.
James Pitts
A Philadelphia judge found in 2017 that James Pitts had a history of coercing witnesses and vacated a murder conviction on that basis. The District Attorney's Office placed him on its do-not-call list in 2018, he left the department, and in 2024 a Philadelphia jury convicted him of perjury and obstruction. The Superior Court has sent Pitts cases back for hearings but has not yet granted relief on a pattern-and-practice claim on the merits.
Ronald Dove
Ronald Dove was fired over allegations that he covered up evidence in a homicide involving his girlfriend, and in 2017 he pleaded guilty to charges arising from the cover-up, including evidence tampering. His misconduct made front-page news in January 2013, and the Superior Court has held that date, not any later disclosure, starts the PCRA clock. No appellate opinion has granted relief on Dove's conduct; the one vacatur on record, Gibbs, followed a Conviction Integrity Unit review.
Reginald Graham
Reginald Graham resigned after a Police Board of Inquiry found him guilty of theft and lying, and the Commonwealth stated it would never again call him as a witness. His name is on the leading published Superior Court decision granting a new trial based on an officer's corruption, Commonwealth v. Robert Williams, which also records a stipulation that, according to a defender's sworn affidavit, the Commonwealth agreed to PCRA relief without a hearing in over 1,500 cases resting on officers it considered not credible.
Narcotics Field Unit (Liciardello, Speiser, Reynolds, Betts, Spicer, Norman)
Six Narcotics Field Unit officers were federally indicted in July 2014 and acquitted of all charges in May 2015. Before the indictment, the District Attorney had already stopped using five of them as witnesses. The Superior Court in Flick treated the DA's December 2012 letter, not the indictment or the acquittal, as the point at which their credibility became a matter of record, and the Common Pleas court has granted PCRA relief in cases built on their work.
Frank Jastrzembski and Manuel Santiago
Frank Jastrzembski and Manuel Santiago investigated the cases of Anthony Wright and James Dennis, both later set aside, and were named in 2021 reporting on the Homicide Division. In the decisions reviewed, no Pennsylvania court has made a finding of misconduct against either detective, and the Superior Court has rejected the PCRA petitions built on their names. Their pages are here because petitioners keep asking, and the answers so far have all been no.
The governing law
Commonwealth v. Castro, 93 A.3d 818 (Pa. 2014). A Daily News article alleged that Narcotics Field Unit Officer Richard Cujdik and others cut store surveillance cameras and stole cash during a 2007 raid. The Supreme Court reversed an en banc Superior Court order granting a hearing: "allegations in an article do not constitute evidence," and a motion "must, at the very least, describe the evidence that will be presented at the hearing." The Court contrasted the case with one where an official report had been issued: "there was no such end product here, no published report, no findings made, no charges filed." Every officer-misconduct petition since has been measured against Castro, and the ones that survive it are the ones that attach an affidavit, a disclosure, a docket, or a finding rather than a headline.
42 Pa.C.S. ยง 9545(b)(1)(ii) and (b)(2). A petition filed more than a year after the judgment became final must plead facts that were unknown to the petitioner and could not have been discovered with due diligence, and must be filed within one year of the date the claim could first have been presented (60 days for claims arising before December 24, 2017). The Superior Court has consistently held that public reporting, a public docket, or a court ruling about an officer starts that clock for everyone, whether or not a particular petitioner saw it. More on the exception and the after-discovered-evidence test.
Convicted on the word of an officer who has since been discredited? Whether the case can be reopened depends on the officer, the date, and what happened in your case specifically. Request a case review or call (215) 568-0607.
These pages report what courts have found, what parties have stipulated, and what the Commonwealth has disclosed, as stated in the cited opinions. Allegations are identified as allegations, and acquittals are stated. Nothing here is a statement about any officer beyond what the cited documents say. General information, not legal advice.