PHP date_create function, converting UTC time to different timezone using the timezone abbrev

instead of converting it to America/New_York time this produced a UTC time that i have stored in my database, why is this, why didnt it convert the time? it is stored in db as 2012-05-13 07:30:47

$placename=America/New_York
 
 $date = date_create($list['stamp'], timezone_open($placename)); 
 echo date_format($date, 'F d g:i a');
 

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