Dec. 8, 2013

“Obviously, there’s a modern trend towards more limited use of executive clemency that extends beyond the current president. I speculate that the increased media scrutiny given to pardons and commutations has made presidents reluctant to exercise clemency…..

“The same trend… may be present in North Carolina as well…. Most of Governor Easley’s pardons were in cases in which DNA evidence exonerated the defendant, while almost all of Governor Perdue’s pardons concerned the racially tainted Wilmington 10 cases…. It is too early to tell how much, or how little, Governor McCrory will exercise executive clemency.”

– From “Do Only Turkeys Get Pardons?” by Jeff Welty at the North Carolina Criminal Law blog (Dec. 5)

The chart above, compiled by Welty, a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Government, depicts poignantly the odds faced by Junior Chandler and others pursuing clemency from recent North Carolina governors.

Since Jim Hunt left office in 2001, pardons have become historically scarce, paralleling the drop-off at the presidential level.  But that smattering of clemency, as Welty points out, is most like to occur in December, under cover of the Christmas spirit.

Jan. 18, 2013

““I am the grandmother of a Little Rascals Day Care victim, and I am greatly disturbed by many responses to ‘Innocence Lost: The Verdict.’

“Wake up out there! Do you think everything you see on television is true? The bizarre stories told by some of the children are unbelievable to the unknowing adult – being cooked in microwave ovens, going on spaceships – but by some Kelly magic, the children were brainwashed to believe them. I repeat! Wake up America.”

 – From a letter to the editor of the Chowan Herald by Frances P. Wilkins of Edenton (Aug. 26, 1993)

Jan. 14, 2013

Junior Chandler’s prospects for at last walking out of Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution a free man remain bleak. After more than 25 years, he is probably the last still-imprisoned victim of the multiple-victim, multiple-offender ritual-abuse day-care panic.

When the North Carolina Supreme Court arbitrarily and tortuously rejected Junior’s appeal, it wrote finis to his options within the system.

Now, however, appellate lawyer Mark Montgomery has referred the case to North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm that represents inmates whose convictions exhibit significant flaws – a category that clearly includes Junior’s.

Mary Pollard, NCPLS executive director, has only begun to examine the file. “The problem with Mr. Chandler’s case,” she says, “is that he has already had a post-conviction review, which could severely constrain what we can do.”

 After Junior submits a formal request for consideration, she expects to make a decision within 90 days on whether to pursue the case.

March 14, 2016

Darryl Hunt, imprisoned for more than 19 years for a murder he did not commit, was found dead in a car in Winston-Salem early Sunday.

“In 1984 at age 19, Hunt was charged with the rape and murder of a newspaper copy editor….” Read more here.

“Hunt was exonerated in 2004 after DNA evidence led police to Willard Brown, who confessed to the killing, and pardoned by then-Gov. Mike Easley.” Read more here.

He was awarded a settlement of more than $1.6 million in 2007 and founded the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice,  an advocacy group for the wrongfully convicted.

“But Hunt was also haunted by his experiences, said those who knew him. He would use ATMs daily, not so much to get money but so he could create a time-stamped receipt and an image recording his location.” Read more here.

“The trauma of wrongful convictions, years in prison, and the responsibilities he took on after he was free wore Hunt down, (his longtime attorney, Mark Rabil) said.

“ ‘In the long run, he eventually got the death penalty,’ Rabil said.” Read more here.

– From “Darryl Hunt, wrongly convicted of murder, found dead” by Lynn Bonner in the News & Observer (March 13)

Exoneration – what a beautiful word. Misleadingly beautiful for those who forever bear the wounds of wrongful conviction.

In 2007 a New York Times study of 137 DNA exonerees showed that “most of them have struggled to keep jobs, pay for health care, rebuild family ties and shed the psychological effects of years of uestionable or wrongful imprisonment.

Another study suggests New York state parolees experienced “a 2-year decline in life expectancy for each year served in prison.”

Perhaps most chilling: Darryl Hunt surely ranked as one of exoneration’s most heartening success stories.