On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that Mickens-Thomas could be released from Graterford Prison as soon as his lawyers demonstrated they could find suitable housing for him.
"We've already found that," said James McCloskey, a longtime champion of Mickens-Thomas' who heads Centurion Ministries, a Princeton group devoted to helping exonerate the wrongly convicted.
McCloskey said Mickens-Thomas will live with his nephew Calvin Mickens and his wife in the Poconos town of Tobyhanna.
Mickens, 62, a retired security officer, said someone from the parole board came to his home Friday and informed him that Mickens-Thomas would be released Tuesday.
"He's my uncle, and I want to do what I can to help him," said Mickens, who believes his uncle is innocent.
Mickens-Thomas has never officially been exonerated, but his conviction was commuted in 1995 by then-Gov. Robert P. Casey Sr. The Pennsylvania Parole Board refused to let him out until 2004, when the same federal appeals court first ordered his release.
Mickens-Thomas returned to prison 15 months later for a parole violation. He allegedly made hostile comments to a counselor who was leading a course for sex offenders that Thomas was required to take, though he maintains he had nothing to do with the crime of which he was convicted.
The victim lived in the same West Philadelphia neighborhood as Mickens-Thomas, near 40th Street and Girard Avenue. Her body was found in an alley about 50 feet from the back of his apartment. The medical examiner determined that she had been raped and strangled.
