A Philadelphia man was freed Tuesday after being jailed in 1983 for a murder he didn’t commit but was convicted due to false testimony from a witness who was provided sex and drugs by police to secure statements that would frame him, the Associated Press reports.

For more than two decades, 61-year-old Willie Stokes wasn’t aware that the key witness in his case had been convicted for perjury months after he was convicted of murder.  No court officer or lawyer reviewed cases in which the witness testified, nor did any prosecutor move to dismiss the conviction.

Franklin Lee, a suspected murderer and rapist at the time, was promised a lighter sentence by two Philadelphia detectives if he testified that he heard Stokes confess to the murder.  To encourage his cooperation, the detectives arranged a tryst with his girlfriend, who was allowed to bring him marijuana and opioids while he was being held.  Later, the detectives arranged a jailhouse visit by a prostitute for Lee when his girlfriend refused to visit the police station. 

Lee’s girlfriend, who was also from the same city neighborhood as Lee and Stokes, told Stokes’ mother about the arrangement weeks after her son’s conviction.  Stokes’ mother then started a campaign to get the conviction overturned, but despite statements from Stokes’ mother, Lee’s girlfriend and ultimately Lee himself, no judge would overturn the conviction.  The two detectives involved have both died.

“Once I talked to my mother, she told me, ‘I didn’t raise you like that, to lie on a man because you got yourself in a jam,’” Lee testified in court last November, according to the transcript. “She said, ‘I couldn’t care if they give you 1,000 years. Go in there and tell the truth.’ And that’s what I did.”

Lee served a total of 35 years in prison for the murder, rape and perjury.  Stokes served 37 years for a crime he didn’t commit.