A man convicted of setting a 1995 fire that killed three Pittsburgh firefighters will get a new trial.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday said it would not hear arguments in the case involving Gregory Brown, who was awarded a new trial last year by Common Pleas Judge Joseph K. Williams III.
A few hours later, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. said he would retry the case.
Dave Fawcett, an attorney with Reed Smith who represents Brown, said his client is “relieved.”
“We’re sensitive to the families of the firefighters whose lives were lost in the tragic fire of 1995, but we represent an innocent man who has spent all of his adult life in jail for a crime he did not commit,” Mr. Fawcett said.
He called it a “double tragedy” — that three firefighters died and that a man was wrongfully convicted.
Brown, 38, was found guilty of three counts of second-degree murder for the 1995 Valentine’s Day fire on Bricelyn Street in the East Hills section of Pittsburgh that killed firefighters Thomas Brooks, 42, Patricia Conroy, 43, and Marc Kolenda, 27.