Thomas seemed to have a cut-and-dried alibi for where he was on the November 1990 morning when Puerto Rican businessman Domingo Martinez was gunned down while transporting $25,000 to a check-cashing store he owned. He said he was checking into the former Youth Study Center for juvenile offenders on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway after he’d been locked up the night before in a completely unrelated matter. He even had a signed subpoena from that morning to prove it. Yet Thomas’ trial attorney somehow failed to convince a jury, forcing an imprisoned inmate to spend years writing letters pleading for someone to believe he didn’t do it.
1) If you convict the wrong person for murder, then the real perp fremains free. You have not found the killer.
2) I would understand 1) (not in a forgivable sense, but in an "at least there's a reason" sense), if cops faced the mythical pressure that you see in cop shows and movies to close cases. 10 unsolved murders! OH NO!!! Pressure's on, detective! The mayor is yelling at the police commissioner!!! But in Philly at least, except for the occasional high profile case involving a child or a white victim (usually a white child), I never see any evidence of that kind of pressure.
The "very very obvious" is that an innocent man has had his life destroyed in an unjust system, but I still don't get why.