They confessed to murder 18 years ago. The NC Innocence Commission wants another look.
Four men convicted as boys of killing NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather in 2002 won a major victory Friday night toward the possibility of exoneration.
In a 5-3 vote after a week-long hearing, the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission found sufficient evidence of factual innocence to send the cases of Rayshawn Banner, Christopher Bryant, Nathaniel Cauthen and Jermal Tolliver to a panel of three superior court judges, who will decide whether to exonerate any of them.
A fifth man convicted in the case, Dorrell Brayboy, was fatally stabbed outside a Winston-Salem Food Lion supermarket last year, The Winston-Salem Journal reported.
The four surviving men waited for the decision at the N.C. Judicial Center they hoped would set in motion a reversal of a guilty verdict they received nearly 18 years ago. The news came at 8 p.m.
“ I just want to thank God. I’ve just been wanting to be heard for so long,” Tolliver said as he left the hearing with his girlfriend, Jalesia Patterson. “Me and all my other co-defendants, we’ve been through a lot.”
The commissioners made “the right decision,” Bryant said. “I did a lot of smiling in there. I’m happy.”
Cauthen and his brother, Banner, who were 15 and 14 years old at the time of Jones’ death, were convicted of first-degree murder and are serving life in prison.
“Whoo!” their mother Teresa Ingram said and exhaled. “Thank you, father. It has been a long, long 17 years going onto 18 years. ... it’s not over yet but it’s almost over.”
Brayboy, Bryant and Tolliver — all 15 at the time — were convicted of second-degree murder and were released after serving prison time.
Men said confessions coerced
The commission voted after all four men testified Friday, saying they weren’t in Jones’ neighborhood until after the crime was committed. They said they don’t know who committed the crime and were coerced into confessing guilt.
“We were supposed to go to the mall, but it started raining,” Tolliver testified.
Later that evening, all but Banner drove up on the scene of police lights at Jones’ house and got out to see what was going on. Banner said he was home and fell asleep watching television.
Tolliver saw a body, lying covered on the ground in Jones’ yard, he testified.
The 61-year-old Jones had been beaten, his hands taped together and his mouth taped shut. He died of a heart attack.
Then, the men testified, they went bowling. Days later, police interrogated all of them, some said for as long as eight hours.
Confessed after threats
Winston-Salem police detectives Stan Nieves and Sean Flynn said, in written statements and interviews presented Wednesday, that they told Bryant and Tolliver about the death penalty, despite the fact that juveniles cannot receive it.
Nieves said he described lethal injection and life in prison to Bryant, but “not as a threat,” The News & Observer previously reported.
Bryant testified Friday that Nieves said, “Hold out your arm,” then pointed at his lower forearm and said “that’s the vein.”
On Thursday, psychologist Hayley Cleary, an expert in police interrogations, compared the teens’ confessions to those in the Central Park Five case in New York City, in which suspects were convicted after false confessions.
“In both of these cases, investigators questioned the youths separately, sometimes for extended periods of time,” Cleary said. “Each suspect was presented with the notion that some other suspect is implicating them — so you might as well confess.”
Tolliver told the commission that the police detectives “wouldn’t accept” it when he told them he didn’t commit the crime.
He said detectives asked about Jones’ missing wallet, but he didn’t know anything about it. After a line of questioning, he told police he and his friends had the wallet, but had gone to the mall in a city bus and thrown it out the window. Later, he told them it was a lie, but he said they wouldn’t believe him.
“I’m telling them, but they’re not listening. .... I figured I had to say something,” he said. He was in eighth grade and said officers never told him he could leave, so eventually he “stopped fighting” and confessed. He called his 2002 confession “a bunch of lies.”
Banner and Cauthen also told commissioners they were threatened with the death penalty during their original police interviews. Banner said after a detective played a recording of Cauthen saying Banner had hit Jones first, he immediately started lying that he was there and a part of the crime too.
Cauthen said he cried as an officer threatened him with lethal injection and even to shoot him if he didn’t talk.
“Any kid would do that,” he told the commissioners, adding that he was just a kid who couldn’t read or write. “Any kid would lie to get out of something.”
He said he asked the police if he could go home, but was told “you can’t go home right now.”
Jim O’Neill pushes back
Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill, who won the Republican primary in March for N.C. Attorney General, sent a report to the commission Friday. It was read to members just before voting deliberations began.
O’Neill said the commission has “confirmation bias” and questioned the process of selecting the case and providing evidence to commissioners.
After reading his comments, Lindsey Guice Smith, the commission’s executive director, said all new information provided to the commission was reported “whether it helps the claimants’ case or not.”
“There’s a bias against what this commission does ... an ignorance of what we do,” said Commissioner Kevin Frye, sheriff of Avery County.
The commission was created in 2006 to seek the truth when there are credible claims of innocence in North Carolina, according to its website. It has received more than 2,700 claims and has conducted 15 hearings, 12 of which have led to exoneration.
Attorney Christine Mumma, who represented Banner at the hearing, said the close vote and O’Neill’s statement are “another indication of the problems with our justice system.”
Staff writer Ashad Hajela contributed to this story.
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