From his prison cell, popular inmate convenes info session among supporters in West Philadelphia
The Spirit, 3/5/25: “From behind the walls of SCI-Pine Grove, Jerome ‘Hoagie’ Coffey, on March 1, called community members together for an update about his legal case and the broader state of PA prisons and people sure answered the call.
It was standing room only at West Philadelphia’s Cedarworks Community Center as lawyers, family members, neighbors, and local advocates gathered to call for Hoagie’s longoverdue release from prison.
‘Behind me is a sign that says 32 years,’ Abolitionist Law Center (ALC) attorney Rupalee Rashatwar said, opening the panel. ‘Almost exactly to the day, 32 years ago, Hoagie was arrested for a murder he didn’t commit.’
The wrongfulness of his 1994 conviction to life-without-parole for the second-degree murder of John Moss, is unquestionable, Rashatwar said. Along with the rest of his legal team at ALC, a primarily Pennsylvania based public interest law firm, she has been representing Hoagie for four years in his latest attempt to appeal the sentence.
On Saturday, she provided an update and recap of the legal saga that has kept him behind bars. The defense claims a “glaring lack of any physical evidence linking him to the case, and rock solid evidence of the conviction’s corrupt underbelly. Witness coercion, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, (and) dubious eyewitness testimonies”
Hoagie’s case, Rashatwar said, is laced with the ‘hallmarks of a wrongful conviction.”