Making sense of U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg’s 23-page “admonishment” of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office requires a look back to October 2020, when Antonio Martinez walked out of prison at age 73 after being incarcerated for more than 30 years for a double murder that another judge and prosecutors now agree he did not commit.

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Tracy Brandeis-Roman vacated Martinez’s conviction, ruling that he was wrongly convicted in a trial tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. District Attorney Larry Krasner dropped the charges the same day, praising Patricia Cummings, chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit, “for her leadership in securing 15 exonerations to date since I took office in January 2018.” That number of exonerations is now up to 18, according to the DA’s Office.