District Attorney Says Man Who Shot, Killed Resident Acted In Self-Defense

Most of the time when we run across a news story about a someone injured or killed by someone inside their own home, the person who caused that injury has been arrested and is facing criminal charges. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, however, the local District Attorney has cleared a man who fatally shot the resident of a home near the city’s downtown earlier this year, ruling that the shooting was an act of self-defense. 

The death of Franklin Roosevelt Lee on January 10th was Harrisburg’s first homicide of the year, but D.A. Fran Chardo says no charges are forthcoming because the death was the result of a justifiable use of force, with Lee as the initial aggressor in the encounter. 

Chardo said Lee grabbed a pistol during a disturbance and shot a man in his house on Jan. 10 in the 1200 block of Walnut Street. The wounded man then grabbed another gun and killed Lee in self-defense around 6:45 a.m., Chardo said.

The killing was ruled a homicide by the coroner, which simply means the death was caused by another person. It does not connote any criminal intent. The homicide case has now been closed without charges after the man gave a statement to Harrisburg police.

The name of the man who killed Lee was not released, nor was any information about how he knew Lee.

According to PennLive.com, Lee was a familiar face among law enforcement, prosecutors, and corrections officers in Pennsylvania. He served more than 30 years in prison for murder, rape, robbery, and a perjury charge connected to the false testimony that helped to put a man named Willie Stokes behind bars for 37 years before he was exonerated in 2022. 

Stokes served 37 years for the Oct. 1, 1980 fatal shooting of Leslie Campbell, 32, during a dice game in North Philadelphia. He was released and exonerated in 2022 at age 61.

Stokes always maintained his innocence in the killing. His attorneys secured a November 2021 evidentiary hearing as part of his bid for freedom, during which Lee testified, news reports said.

At the 2021 hearing, Lee said two Philadelphia detectives summoned his girlfriend to have sex with him at police headquarters in 1983 and allowed her to bring along marijuana and opioids, The Associated Press reported.

On another occasion, the detectives brought in condoms and a sex worker and offered Lee a plea deal in his murder case, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

News reports said the detectives were enticing Lee to lie and say Stokes, a neighborhood friend of Lee’s, told Lee he killed Campbell. In exchange for the lie, detectives said they would secure a light sentence in Lee’s murder case, according to the AP. News reports said the detectives have since died.

“I fell weak and went along with the offer,” Lee told a federal judge in November 2021, news reports said.

Lee was released on probation in 2019, and managed to stay out of trouble during the past five years. Authorities haven’t said what sparked the argument between the two men on January 10th or how they determined that Lee, and not the unnamed visitor to the home, was the initial aggressor, but even on the day of the shooting there was apparently evidence that the visitor was acting in self-defense. The unnamed man was questioned by police at the scene, but wasn’t taken into custody or formally charged with a crime. 

It would be great if the District Attorney would provide some details about why law enforcement on the scene and investigators in her office determined that the unnamed named who shot and killed Lee did so in self-defense, if only for the sake of transparency. Maybe those details will dribble out to the press in the days ahead, but whether or not we learn more about what happened in that home on January 10, 2025, we know that those with access to all of the information believe that Lee’s death was an act of self-preservation and self-defense by the visitor to his home.