New Hope for Phoenix Trio Imprisoned for Murder After Police Killed Their Friend 

A Maricopa County judge has granted three young people imprisoned for a killing committed by a Phoenix police officer a chance at post conviction relief. 

Johnny Reed, Sariah Busani, and Jeremiah Triplett were 14, 19, and 20 respectively when a Phoenix police officer shot and killed their friend, 19-year-old Jacob Harris on Jan. 11, 2019. They have been imprisoned ever since. 

“Sending children to prison to struggle to navigate their way towards some resemblance of survival is wrong, inhuman, and unconstitutional,” Triplett’s mother, Theresa Greene, told The Appeal. “It not only pushes that child to grow believing they are unworthy but it takes a toll on the family as well. Mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially this ordeal is slowly destroying all of us.”

Arizona’s felony murder law allows people to be charged with murder even when they did not kill anyone. If someone dies while a person is committing certain felony offenses, like robbery or drug crimes, that person can be charged with murder.

Prosecutors initially threatened to seek the death penalty, Jacob’s father, Roland Harris, said. At another point during the prosecution, Busani faced 75 years in prison. Afraid that they could spend the rest of their lives in prison or be killed, Triplett, Reed, and Busani accepted plea deals from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for 30 years, 15 years, and 10 years respectively. Reed, who was 14 at the time police killed Harris, was sentenced to more years in prison than he had been alive. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, led by Rachel Mitchell, who is running for reelection this year, has continued to defend these sentences to this day.

“The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office is confident in the sentencing imposed two years ago,” the office said in a statement shared with The Appeal. “These individuals pled guilty to the crimes committed and their sentence was just based on their level of involvement, their age, and their criminal history.”

After The Appeal published an investigation last year into Harris’s murder and the prosecution of his friends, a community coalition formed to demand justice for Harris, Reed, Triplett, and Busani. The Justice for Jacob Harris, Free the Phoenix Three coalition includes The Anti Police-Terror Project, Decarcerate Arizona, Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro, the parents of Harris, Reed, and Triplett, as well as several other community groups. Those groups formed the coalition after radio host and community organizer Cat Brooks featured Roland Harris and The Appeal on her show, Law and Disorder, and offered to assist Roland.

The coalition has organized community events like basketball tournaments and barbecues to support the families, as well as press conferences demanding Phoenix fire the officers responsible for Harris’s death and free his incarcerated friends. With the help of a legal expert, the coalition in April filed requests for post-conviction relief for The Phoenix Three. 

On May 29, the Maricopa County Superior Court allowed Busani, Reed, and Triplett’s post-conviction relief claims to move forward and appointed an attorney to each of them. 

In Arizona, post-conviction relief claims are due 90 days after sentencing. But relief can still be granted past that deadline under extraordinary circumstances. While that deadline has passed, Triplett, Reed, and Busani argued they should still be allowed to seek relief because information about potential misconduct committed by police officers, prosecutors, and city officials involved in their cases only came to light last year.

In particular, the trio points to the scandal unearthed by ABC15 that Jennifer DiPonzio, a lead Phoenix Police Department homicide detective who investigated Harris’s murder, mishandled evidence in dozens of homicide cases. DiPonzio failed to document or impound dozens of audio interviews from murder investigations and left other homicide evidence sitting in brown paper bags under her desk for weeks at a time.  

DiPonzio documented, collected, and impounded evidence from the scene of Harris’s killing. Prosecutors used that information to exonerate the police and convict Harris’s friends for murder. According to the police report on Harris’s death, Kristopher Bertz, the officer who killed Harris, told DiPonzio where Harris was and what the teen was doing when Bertz shot him. DiPonzio marked the distance between Harris and police at the scene. 

In a sworn deposition, Phoenix homicide detective Anthony Winter said DiPonzio was likely the person who took three cell phones from the scene of Harris’s murder and brought them to a police vehicle to be charged. After that, someone gave the phones to the FBI to extract information from them. But no one documented the devices’ chains of custody, so it is difficult to track what exactly happened to them. The families still do not have their children’s phones to this day.

Winter, the lead investigator for Harris’s murder, also said in the deposition that he could not recall where police found the gun that law enforcement officials say belonged to Harris. Winter said DiPonzio was the best person to answer that question—but attorneys for the city of Phoenix said she was too unwell to testify. 

In December 2021, city attorneys said DiPonzio could “hardly speak,” was “out-of-breath consistently,” and was out on medical leave. But an ABC15 investigation found that DiPonzio worked multiple jobs after going on leave, including at a salon and as a stretch therapist at a chiropractic office.

In June of last year, ABC15 found that DiPonzio was on the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office’s secretive Brady list—a ledger of cops with credibility issues that prosecutor’s offices sometimes maintain. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brady v. Maryland that prosecutors must provide defense attorneys with any evidence that may be favorable to them, including information that casts doubt on the credibility of a police officer.

“None of this exculpatory information was turned over to me or my defense attorney,” Busani said in her request for relief.

DiPonzio’s misconduct impacted dozens of murder cases. At least one public defender filed a motion to dismiss one of DiPonzio’s cases due to “outrageous government misconduct.” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Bruce Cohen ultimately denied that motion—but agreed that DiPonzio’s repeated failures should have been disclosed by prosecutors.“

[DiPonzio’s supervisor] Sgt. Barker’s observations and experiences with DiPonzio from the Fall of 2020 through the summer of 2021 portray a scathing outline of DiPonzio’s derelictions while serving as a homicide detective,” Cohen wrote in a Jan. 2024 court filing. “Separate from how this may impact the motions pending before this Court, it clearly supports the Court’s operating presumption in this matter—that DiPonzio’s derelictions were sufficient to trigger a Brady notice.”

Now that the trio’s post-conviction proceedings are moving forward, the case has returned to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Suzanne Cohen, who presided over the trio’s original cases.

During the criminal proceedings against Triplett, Reed, and Busani, Cohen stated unequivocally that Harris did not point a gun at police, as law enforcement officials have occasionally claimed.

“That did not happen,” Cohen said. “He did not turn as he was running and point the gun. His body is going in one direction and one direction only.”

As the cases proceed before Cohen once more, the group’s attorneys will review transcripts from previous settlement conferences and sentencing hearings. Per the rules of the court, the trio’s attorneys must file their petitions for post-conviction relief within 60 days of receiving the transcripts.

The court has already given Triplett and Busani’s attorneys deadlines for filing their petitions: Sept. 17 and 27 respectively. Reed’s attorney has not yet been given a deadline. 

After petitions for post-conviction relief are filed, prosecutors must file their response within 45 days. Defense attorneys then have a 15-day window to respond to the prosecution.

Jared Keenan, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, told The Appeal the court could then hold hearings for arguments from both sides and order an evidentiary hearing. The county attorney’s office could also admit it had information it failed to turn over.

Eventually, the court will rule on the claim and either grant or deny their petitions.

If their petitions are granted, “Really all the court could do is order the plea to be dissolved,” said Keenan. “And then you’re back to square one.”

However, it is possible in Arizona to be sentenced to more time than you were originally given when pursuing post-conviction relief. 

But Triplett, Reed, and Busani could negotiate better plea deals now that all of the misconduct surrounding their cases has come to light. When Reed, Triplett, and Busani took deals years ago, they didn’t have an organized movement fighting for them. Now that they do, their loved ones hope things might go differently.“I’d love to see the kids come home,” said Roland Harris. “Give them time served.”