Photo by Laura Granese / Colibri Workshop for the Innocence Project
Jermal Shuler, Marc Brittingham, and Rasheed Turner walked out together on May 26. New forensic evidence on the time of death undid a case built on a single witness.
Yahweh, how long will I cry, and you will not hear?… Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails.
Habakkuk 1:2-4
On May 26, 2026, three Philadelphia men walked out of prison together. Jermal Shuler, Marc Brittingham, and Rasheed Turner had each served twenty-eight years for the 1997 murder of an elderly widow named Essie May Thomas. The case rested on one witness whose story did not hold up. There was no physical evidence. A new forensic analysis of the time of death finally proved it.
When a Christian hears that, the reflex is to find a redemptive frame. God's timing. He must have learned something inside. The reflex is well-meaning. It is also a way of not calling the thing what it was.
Habakkuk refuses that move. He looks at injustice in his country and tells God the law has stopped working and the wicked are winning. He does not soften it. He does not justify the timing. The complaint is recorded as scripture.
Twenty-eight years were taken from these three men. They were not given to them for a reason. Habakkuk is permission to say that out loud without losing God in the saying.