Not Guilty: Thirty Six Actual Cases in Which
An Innocent Man Was Convicted
(1957)
by Judge Jerome Frank and Barbara Frank
Excerpt on
Anthony Piano
In March 1937 a gang held up and robbed a retired mailman,
George Fleet, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The police arrested
twenty-year-old Anthony Piano as a member of the holdup gang. Identified by
the mailman, Fleet, Piano went to trial. After the jury's guilty verdict the
judge sentenced the prisoner to not less than two and not more than four
years in the workhouse. Months later the police arrested eighteen-yearold
Charles Pampana, implicated by other members of the gang. When the police
confronted Fleet with Pampana, the mailman immediately recognized Pampana as
the boy he had thought was Piano. Piano's conviction was set aside and the
prosecutor dismissed the suit. In October 1937, after seven months'
imprisonment, Piano was freed.
SOURCE
1. Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 24, 1937.