A Philadelphia man who spent nearly two decades on death row and later won a partial new trial in 2003 in which he was sentenced to life in prison has now been granted an entirely new trial on the grounds that his original lawyer failed to call a witness who could have corroborated his claim that he had acted in self-defense.
In its 24-page opinion in Rolan v. Vaughn, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2004 decision by U.S. District Judge Berle M. Schiller that vacated Florencio Rolan’s murder conviction.
