PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anisa Khalifa: Hey everyone. A heads up before we start that this episode contains descriptions of violence, including mentions of sexual violence and suicide. Please listen with care
For people who are wrongfully convicted of a crime. The path to prove their innocence is often very difficult.
Will Michaels: It takes a long time for defendants to go through the appeals process. It's years of their life in prisons for a crime they did not commit.
Anisa Khalifa: But for nearly 20 years, a special group of investigators in North Carolina has helped people who have evidence of their innocence walk free
Will Michaels: since.
The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission was created. More than a dozen people have been exonerated, who altogether have served more than 300 years in prison again for crimes they did not commit. Of two African American half brothers who have been exonerated of rape and murder convictions in North Carolina after over 30 years behind bars.
Anisa Khalifa: Despite this headline grabbing success. This independent state agency remains incredibly rare in the American legal system. In fact,
Michael Hewlett: there's no other, um, agency like this in the country,
Anisa Khalifa: and yet it's at risk of coming to an end.
Will Michaels: Some state lawmakers have argued that it's not necessarily a very efficient process and that there are other avenues that people can go to to claim their innocence.
Anisa Khalifa: I am Anisa Khalifa. This is the broad side where we tell stories from our home at the crossroads of the South this week, the origin story for a one of a kind lifeline for the wrongfully convicted and what's at stake if it goes away.
Michael Hewlett: My name is Michael Hewlett. I'm a criminal justice reporter for the assembly.
Anisa Khalifa: Michael recently wrote a piece for the assembly about a. Special agency one dedicated to investigating post-conviction claims of innocence. It's called the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. In his story, Michael dug into why this commission is unique and why some people don't want it around anymore.
So let's start with that first one. What makes this commission so remarkable?
Michael Hewlett: Number one, it is, uh. An independent state funded agency is the only kind, um, in the entire country. They have the legal authority to go and get evidence from police, from prosecutors, and test it, and they don't have to go to court and ask a judge for a court order in order to do these things.
Anisa Khalifa: And that's much different from something like an Innocence project. Those are typically nonprofits that represent people in court. The North Carolina Commission doesn't do that. It's a neutral group that ultimately decides if there's merit to a claim of innocence. And this investigative body actually has the power to overturn convictions.
Michael Hewlett: They have reviewed more than 3000 or so claims. They're vetted, they're screened. Some of those get screened out for a number of reasons, mostly because they may not be claims of factual innocence
Anisa Khalifa: or it doesn't fit within the commission's purview. Unlike the traditional appeals process, it doesn't look into accusations of procedural wrongdoing.
Like for example, if somebody claims their attorney didn't adequately represent them at the trial,
Michael Hewlett: that's not what they're looking for. They're looking for pure claims that you are factually innocent,
Anisa Khalifa: clear, and convincing proof. And to do that, all claims go through a strict investigation process. This is where the commission can flex some of their special powers
Michael Hewlett: because of their legal authority, because of their power, they're able to go in to prosecutor's offices, go into police departments, and if there are cases where they turn over stuff and then the commission staff realizes, Hey, we're still missing.
They can go to the police department and say, Hey, we wanna look around. And they have found evidence that had not been turned over.
Anisa Khalifa: But Michael says it's still very rare for somebody's claim to make it all the way to the next step. A hearing. Out of the thousands of claims that have been filed, less than 1% have had a hearing in front of the commission's board.
Michael Hewlett: The commission has to find that there's sufficient evidence of factual innocence, and if they do, then it goes through a three judge panel that ultimately determines whether or not this person will be exonerated.
Anisa Khalifa: In total, the commission has helped exonerate 16 people who were wrongfully convicted, many of whom had spent decades in prison,
Michael Hewlett: and there are cases where somebody's convicted.
Based on the evidence that is presented in court. And then you find out 20 years later that there were decisions that police and prosecutors made to withhold certain evidence or to ignore other avenues that might have pointed them to another suspect.
Anisa Khalifa: Hmm. And that's a situation with a recent high profile case.
Can you tell me about the death of Nathaniel Jones in Winston-Salem?
Michael Hewlett: Yes, so Nathaniel Jones was the proprietor of a gas station in Winston-Salem, and his grandson is, is famous. Uh, his grandson is Chris Paul, who now plays for the la uh, Clippers at the time of Mr. Jones' death in 2002. Chris Paul was a standout basketball player at West Forsyth High School, had just signed to play for Wake Forest.
Unidentified Anchor: An up and coming Piedmont High School basketball player. Takes time out to talk about his biggest fan, his grandfather. Tonight police arrest five teenagers for allegedly robbing and killing the man who cheered the loudest for his grandson.
Michael Hewlett: Mr. Jones was attacked at his home on November 15th, 2002, hit in the face in the head until he died of a cardiac arrhythmia and was left tied up in his carport.
And these five teenagers, several days afterward, were brought in. The police determined that they were suspects. Rayshawn Banner, um, his brother, Nathaniel Cauthen. Jermal Toliver, Christopher Bryant and the late Dorell Brayboy. Um, and eventually they were charged with first degree murder.
Unidentified Anchor: Chris Paul is relieved to know that someone is behind bars, but he never thought that teenagers would be responsible.
Chris Paul: 14 to 15, I'm thinking, you know, I'm 17. I couldn't imagine ki killing somebody
Unidentified Anchor: the day before Jones was
Michael Hewlett: killed. So the boys had always claimed that they were innocents, um, that they were coerced into making false statements. That they had been held in for hours in interrogation rooms without lawyers, without their parents, that they were threatened with the death penalty.
But what changed was that there was a key witness, this, uh, Jessicah Black, a 16-year-old girl who had befriended them just few months before, who was the key witness in both of their trials? And was able to establish that she was there. She, she had drove them to the scene of the crime. She came out about six or seven years ago and said that was all a lie.
She fully recanted. She said that the police had coerced her Oh my goodness. Into making false statements. And every time she tried to tell the truth, she was told that she was a liar. And so eventually she. Decided to tell them what they wanted to hear.
Anisa Khalifa: And so the young men were incarcerated for this crime and eventually they filed a claim of innocence with the commission.
What happened to their claim?
Michael Hewlett: The commission board decided that there was sufficient evidence of factual innocence, and then it went to a three judge panel, and that three judge panel held a hearing back in 2022, but that three judge panel upheld the conviction.
Anisa Khalifa: Michael says, at this point, two out of the five men were still serving time for Nathaniel Jones murder.
But even after the panel upheld their conviction, they didn't give up, they went back to the county's superior court and filed a motion to consider new evidence in the case.
Michael Hewlett: And the judge in that case held an evidentiary hearing in January and just this past Friday issued a ruling, exonerating them and dismissing the charges with prejudice, meaning that they can't be retried.
Anisa Khalifa: And so what's the link between that ruling and the Innocence Inquiry Commission?
Michael Hewlett: The linkage between the Innocence Commission and this result is that a lot of the new evidence. That was used in the evidentiary hearing in January came out of the commission's investigation. Uh, there was new DNA testing and the commission was able to put on the record Jessicah Black's recantation.
Anisa Khalifa: But despite this recent ruling and exoneration, the two men still aren't free.
Michael Hewlett: The Attorney General's office has filed a petition with a court of appeals to intervene and they have filed for a temporary stay. And because the temporary state was granted, it means that they will have to stay in prison a little bit longer.
Anisa Khalifa: As cases like this traverse the court's many complexities. The very existence of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is at risk. The state Senate called for eliminating the commission's funding in their recent budget proposal. The house's budget retains the $1.6 million to fund the group.
Now the two chambers have to work it out and come up with one all powerful state budget.
Michael Hewlett: We have no idea when that will actually happen, so it's still up in the air of whether or not this will be approved.
Anisa Khalifa: So why is it being threatened and what's the reasoning that people are giving for taking it away?
Michael Hewlett: One of the interesting arguments that was made by one of the legislators was that the Innocence Inquiry Commission, because we only had 16 exonerations, that just proves that they don't have enough work. There really aren't that many legitimate claims anyway, so why are we spending all this money on the commission?
Now the commission would say, now, the reason why you only have only 16 exoneration is because we screen out so much and we're doing as much as we can to investigate and only focus our attention on the ones where we really have some evidence of factual innocence.
Anisa Khalifa: What about district attorneys? Like what do they think about this?
Michael Hewlett: What I hear from prosecutors is that they believe that the Innocence Inquiry process is unfair. There's a lot of emphasis. From a prosecutor's perspective on finality IE, you had this case, it was tried before jury and they came back with a verdict and so there should be some respect for that verdict.
And they look at the Innocence Inquiry Commission, it's process as unfair to them. Uh, specifically there's a part of the process where there is a hearing in front of the commission. It's not, you have the prosecutor on one side and the defense on on the other. The, the whole case is being presented by the commission staff.
The commission says we are independent. There are times where we actually find evidence that actually confirms someone it's guilt, as well as affirm someone's innocence.
Anisa Khalifa: Is there a feeling that guilty people are abusing the process to get erroneous exonerations?
Michael Hewlett: Yes. Their belief is that yes, there are a lot of guilty people who are getting all of these opportunities to appeal their case, and by allowing all of these appeals, you're opening up all of these wounds for all of these victims and their families.
Now, on the other side, you know, you say we're innocent. So in the case that I talked about from Winston Cell on these grown men. They said we are innocent. We were forced to make these false confessions. We have spent all of this time in prison for a crime that we didn't commit. So if you're innocent, the justice system should be able to respond to legitimate claims of innocence and the response from prosecutors.
Shouldn't be. Well, we need to do everything that we can to uphold the conviction. It should be, Hey, did we make a mistake? And if we did, we should rectify it.
Anisa Khalifa: It's a murky reality for a system that's supposed to be black and white. Yes or no, innocent or guilty. And since its inception, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission has tried to get a little closer to that ideal of justice, but how did it come to be in the first place?
Will Michaels: You know, I've been a reporter for 15 years and it is the most and heart wrenching and. Egregious example of a mis justice in the system that I can think of
Anisa Khalifa: that's coming up after a short break.
Will Michaels: My name is Will Michaels. I am a reporter and host at WUNC.
Anisa Khalifa: Over the years Will has reported on a tragic case involving a man named Darryl Hunt. It started in 1984 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with a heinous violent crime.
Will Michaels: A young white woman named Deborah Sykes was raped and murdered just blocks away from where she worked as a copy editor, sale
Unidentified Anchor: police have now identified a body found downtown this afternoon as that of 25-year-old Deborah Brotherton Sykes. A copy editor at the Twin City Sentinel newspaper. Deborah Sykes' employer, the Winston-Salem Journal Sentinel is offering $2,500 for information leading to the arrest of Sykes murderers.
Anisa Khalifa: The crime immediately got a lot of attention. And police were under pressure to quickly find the perpetrator
Will Michaels: and they pointed the finger at the wrong person. A young black man named Darryl Hunt was accused of the crime, but there was no physical evidence tying him to the case.
Anisa Khalifa: The case against Hunt rested largely on eyewitness testimony, evidence that is now widely considered to be unreliable.
Will Michaels: The investigation was flawed. The testimony was flawed. So based on the accounts that I've been able to review, it seems like he simply fit the description.
Anisa Khalifa: A year later in 1985, hunt was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison a.
Will Michaels: He goes through the usual appeals process, which in North Carolina can go through to the State Court of appeals, then to the state Supreme Court, and he did. He went through those avenues
Anisa Khalifa: on appeal. Hunt's conviction was actually overturned by the state Supreme Court. Key testimony had been recanted, but the prosecution still used it in the trial.
Will Michaels: And it has been proven in years since through investigations of the Winston-Salem Police Department that there was a massive coverup of his entire case.
Anisa Khalifa: As a result, hunt was released on Bond in 1989 and offered a plea deal. If he said he was guilty, he could avoid a retrial.
Will Michaels: Darryl Hunt turned it down.
He would not admit to doing something that he knew he didn't do, even if it allowed him to go free.
Anisa Khalifa: In the retrial that followed an all-white jury convicted hunt. Again, he was sent back to prison
Will Michaels: and he would be in prison for at least a decade more because of that decision.
Anisa Khalifa: One more blow came in the mid nineties. The emerging signs of DNA led to a review of evidence found at the crime scene, and the DNA that investigators tested was not a match for hunt.
Will Michaels: But a superior court judge reviews the case and says, while the retesting of the DNA evidence is compelling, it does not fatally flaw the prosecution's case.
And then it goes to the North Carolina Supreme Court and the Supreme Court strikes it down four to three that close. So he spent several more years in prison.
Darryl Hunt: I have never been a angry person.
Anisa Khalifa: This is Darryl Hunt, speaking on the WUNC program, the state of things. In 2007,
Darryl Hunt: when I first got convicted and went to prison, it was the older gentleman who had been in almost 20 years. I see me walking around the yard and he called me and he said he wanted to tell me something and he said, you know, if you want to live.
He said, don't be angry, uh, because anger eats you up from the inside out. And he asked me, do I want to live? And I said, yes, because I wanna prove my innocence. And I would take that with me every day
Anisa Khalifa: after nearly 20 years of incarceration. Darryl Hunt was ultimately able to prove his innocence in the eyes of the law.
Will Michaels: In the early two thousands, Darryl Hunt's attorneys finally compel yet another retesting of the DNA evidence, and they finally found that it linked back to. A man who was not Darryl Hunt, who then confessed to the crime.
And it was only at that point that Darryl Hunt was finally released.
Unidentified Anchor: Darryl Hunt is free after 19 years. surrounded by family and supporters. Darryl Hunt walked out of prison a free man.
Darryl Hunt: I always had faith that one day I always be free. Um, and that kept me gone.
Anisa Khalifa: Hunt later received an apology from the Winston-Salem City Council.
He was also awarded a $1.6 million settlement, which he used to start a nonprofit to help people who had been imprisoned, reintegrate into society.
Darryl Hunt: The big part of my job is reentry, uh, people getting outta prison, period, uh, trying to help them find jobs, housing, clothing, uh, and trying to educate. The public, uh, about the problems that they face.
Unidentified Anchor: North Carolina Governor Mike Easley has signed a law creating the nation's first statewide Innocence Inquiry Commission. The board will review the cases of state inmates who say they can prove they were wrongfully convicted.
Will Michaels: it was because of Darryl Hunt's exoneration that in 2006, the state legislature took up this proposal to create some sort of review board, some commission that could look into claims of actual innocence.
And it's the fact that Darryl Hunt had to go through everything that he went through that compelled the state legislature to vote for and approve this new board.
Anisa Khalifa: After his release, Darryl Hunt continued to speak out against flaws in the criminal justice system, but all the while he carried a heavy weight from his own experience.
Will Michaels: He did some interviews with WUNC in 2007 where you can clearly hear the effects that prison has had on him.
Darryl Hunt: I'm still adjusting every day. I mean, um, I'm sitting here now using a technique that I used in prison. What is that? Watching the mirrors to see what's behind me. Watching that glass to see that glass that I could see behind me. That's how you had to live in prison.
Will Michaels: I remember him in that interview saying, that's probably gonna be with me for the rest of my life. And I think unfortunately it was, um, he, about 10 years ago, was. Found dead in a locked car, um, of an apparent suicide.
So how can we possibly talk about making someone whole after going through all of that?
Anisa Khalifa: Yeah. I mean, it's such a heartbreaking story. Why is it so important for us to remember Darryl Hunt's story?
Will Michaels: It is. Perhaps the greatest argument for a reform of the system. It's, it's an argument for some sort of review board because holy smokes, like, how do, how do we let that happen? How can something like this happen?
Michael Hewlett: And many cases, the commission. Was able to find new evidence that would no, would not have been found in any other circumstance.
Anisa Khalifa: Criminal justice reporter Michael Hewlett says that if this unique agency goes away, people in situations like Darryl Hunt will have far fewer options at their disposal.
Michael Hewlett: I think it will be an immense impact. You know, the court would be inundated with more alleged wrongful convictions. It, it will be up to Innocence Projects, private attorneys who do this kind of work, figuring out ways that they can help their clients, challenge their convictions. It will be a little bit harder because again, you have to convince a judge somewhere that we need access to evidence.
You would have to, you know, the court would be inundated with more alleged wrongful convictions. That we'll have to go through the slow process of getting a judge to issue a court order to do certain things, to prove that this person is innocent, always wrongfully convicted.
Anisa Khalifa: If you look at the mission of the Innocence Inquiry Commission, it seems like a no-brainer. Somebody says they're innocent, so you look into their claim and see if they were wrongfully convicted. It feels like a simple idea that everyone could get behind. But Michael says, the cultural baggage we carry around, the idea of criminal justice means it's just not that clear cut.
Michael Hewlett: I think there's this idea that prosecutors are supposed to lock up the bad guys. Maybe they, they might be flawed. Maybe they might push too hard, but for the most part, all the people that you see in handcuffs are guilty. And it's just a matter of how you get them convicted, but the reality is a lot murkier.
Anisa Khalifa: If you'd like to check out more reporting from Michael Hewlett and Will Michaels, we've dropped some links in the show notes. This episode was produced by Charlie Shelton Ormond, and edited by Jared Walker. Our executive producer is Wilson Ser. The Broadside is a production of w UNC North Carolina Public Radio, and is part of the NPR R Network.
If you have feedback or a story idea, you can email us at broadside@wunc.org. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, a review, or share it with a friend. I am Anissa Khalifa. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll be back next week.