Around 7:30 a.m. on September 26, 1991, police officers in Raleigh, North Carolina, discovered the body of 26-year-old Jacquetta Thomas lying on the pavement in a cul-de-sac at the end of Blount Street. A medical examiner conducted an autopsy and concluded that Thomas was beaten to death.
While officers were processing the crime scene, 29-year-old Gregory Taylor came by to pick up his Nissan Pathfinder, which was stuck in the mud on a service road about 150 yards away.
Taylor was brought in for questioning, and he told Detective Johnny Howard that he and Johnny Beck had driven up the road the night before, got stuck while four-wheeling, and then walked down the service road. Taylor said they saw a body in the cul-de-sac but kept walking and didn't call the police. Taylor said the body hadn't been there when they drove up the service road. Taylor also said he had never seen Thomas before and had no contact with her that night.
During the interview, Howard showed Taylor photos of Thomas and told her that she had died a horrible death. Taylor asked Howard, "How did she die? Did someone cut her throat?"
Although Taylor asserted his innocence, Howard told him that he had a choice to make, "whether you want to be a witness or you want to be a defendant. Whether you want to be truthful with me or whether you want to stick to this story that I can prove is wrong and then you be charged with something that maybe John done."
Howard told Taylor that luminol testing, a chemical test which identifies the presence of blood, had been performed at the crime scene, and revealed the presence of blood on his SUV.
That was false-the testing hadn't been performed. Howard also falsely said a witness had seen Taylor near the crime scene. As the interview continued, Taylor revised his account of the night and said that he and Beck had been smoking crack cocaine in the Pathfinder in the early morning when the vehicle got stuck.
Taylor and Beck were arrested later that day and charged with murder.
In 1992 and 1993, 16 months into preparation for his trial, Taylor's attorney, James Blackburn, surrendered his law license after it came out that he had embezzled fees from his law firm. Blackburn was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder as well.
Taylor's trial in Wake County Superior Court began on April 13, 1993. He was now represented by Michael Dodd, along with R.L. Adams.
Agent Donald Pagani, a forensic technician with the City-County Bureau of Identification in Wake County, testified, although not as an expert witness, about processing the crime scene. He said the Taylor's Pathfinder was dusted for fingerprints but that no prints "matching" Thomas were found on the vehicle. He also testified about the luminol and other testing performed on the Pathfinder to detect the presence of blood. He said that based on tire impressions at the crime scene, officials "had very good reason to believe at that point that a vehicle had passed through the blood of the victim."
Pagani said the testing showed a positive reaction to blood on the vehicle's undercarriage, but there were also other areas where the testing did not indicate the presence of blood. The tires on the Pathfinder were also subjected to luminol testing, but there were no positive reactions.
Agent William Hensley, Pagani's supervisor at the crime bureau, testified that luminol placed in the cul-de-sac where Thomas's body was found reacted to linear marks on the pavement that appeared to be tire tracks. The tracks, he testified, "went by the body probably through the pool of blood by the head and left arm area and then it traveled in a northerly direction, turned sharply, went back to a southern direction and then went in a southeasterly direction up towards the path" to the service road.
Hensley testified that the lack of blood on the tires was most likely because the Pathfinder had spun its wheels after getting stuck in the mud.
Andy Currin, a former dog handler with the Raleigh Police Department, testified as an expert witness about his use of scent tracking at the crime scene. Because Sadie, a bloodhound, was trained to track the scent of live people, not dead individuals, Dodd argued against admitting Currin's testimony. Judge J.B. Allen Jr. denied that motion.
Currin said that when he and Sadie arrived at the crime scene, he laid some sterile gauze over part of Thomas's body, then removed the gauze and walked about 25 feet away. There, he allowed Sadie to smell the object and gave her a command to "find."
Currin said the dog zig-zagged toward the vehicle but lost the scent trail and returned to him. He said he tried again, now starting about 30 feet from the Pathfinder. This time, Sadie "jumped up" on both sides of the vehicle, which Currin testified indicated that Thomas's scent was somewhere on the SUV.
On cross-examination, Currin testified that he could not see the Pathfinder from the original starting place. He also said he could not remember if an officer told him that the police were trying to obtain a search warrant for the vehicle. He said that he had told his supervisors on previous occasions that Sadie was not trained to track a scent from a dead body. He also testified that Sadie was "real reliable."
Prosecutors presented a report from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) that said there was a chemical indication for the presence of blood on the bumper of the Pathfinder.
Dr. Deborah Radisch, the state's associate chief medical examiner, who had performed the autopsy on Thomas the day after her body was found, testified that Thomas had two types of wounds: cutting wounds and blunt force trauma wounds, which suggested that two types of weapons had been used in the murder. The cutting wounds included lacerations to her neck, face, and chest, Radisch said.
Howard testified that he was at the crime scene when Taylor and his wife showed up at around 8:30 a.m. By then, officers had already run the license plate on the Pathfinder.
Howard said his first interview with Taylor lasted about 45 minutes, and he didn't believe Taylor's account of the evening. During the second interview, Howard said, Taylor admitted to smoking crack. The jury heard the recording of the interview.
During cross-examination, Howard testified that Taylor cooperated with the police, giving officers contact information for Johnny Beck and allowing them to search his house. He also testified that he had repeatedly lied to Taylor during the interrogation. He said he had falsely told him that a witness had already identified him and that Beck had pinned the murder on Taylor. Howard said this was an investigative technique designed to get at the truth.
Howard also testified that he showed Thomas's photo to Taylor and that Taylor had asked whether her throat had been cut. He said a Polaroid photo was too tightly framed to indicate how Thomas had died.
Eva Marie Kelly, a sex worker, testified that on the night Thomas died, Taylor's Pathfinder stopped in front of her house and the passenger, who was a Black man, called her over. (Beck is Black.) A white man was driving, Kelly said, and he asked her to "party" with them. Kelly said she refused, and the men drove off.
Later that night, Kelly testified, she saw the two men in the rooming house where she lived. They were at a table doing drugs with two other sex workers, "Jackie" and "Whoopie." Kelly said she left for about 45 minutes, and when she returned, the two men were leaving with Jackie.
Kelly identified Taylor as the white man she saw leaving with Jackie. At the time of the trial, Kelly faced two probation violations, each with a five-year sentence. In exchange for Kelly's testimony, the Wake County District Attorney's Office agreed to not oppose concurrent sentences.
Kelly testified that the police never showed her any photo arrays of potential suspects. More importantly, she testified that the police showed her a photo of Thomas on October 1, 1991, and that she told the police the victim was not the woman she knew as "Jackie." Jackie, she said, was someone else she knew from the streets.
Kelly said, "The girl Jackie that I saw with these two men, you know, when they came out of my house, and that dead body still doesn't look like the same person."
Ernest Andrews testified that he was in the Wake County Jail when he spoke with Taylor. At the time, Andrews was awaiting transfer to a state prison after being convicted of embezzlement, and he had a lengthy record of convictions on similar charges.
Andrews testified that Taylor told him he was in jail on a murder charge. In response to a question from another person about how the victim died, Andrews said Taylor said the victim had "died with a smile on her face, that her throat was cut from ear to ear." According to Andrews, "He never said that he cut her throat, and he never said the Black guy cut her throat."
Andrews testified that in a later conversation, Taylor said that prior to the murder, he and his friend were "partying" with the woman when she got upset. According to Andrews, Taylor said he hit the woman, and she jumped out of the vehicle. The other man jumped out and ran after her. When the other man returned, he said the woman "wouldn't be partying anymore."
Taylor did not testify, and his attorney presented no other witnesses. On April 18, 1993, after less than two hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Taylor of first-degree murder and acquitted him of accessory after the fact to murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
According to the News & Observer of Raleigh, the state had tried to get Taylor to implicate Beck by offering to commute his sentence. "If the state is forced to enter a dismissal in Mr. Beck's case because of Mr. Taylor's refusal to cooperate, we will consider any offer we made him to be forever withdrawn," wrote Tom Ford, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case. But Taylor declined to implicate Beck.
On August 18, 1993, the state dismissed the charges against Beck.
Taylor appealed, arguing that there had been insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction, that Judge Allen had erred in admitting the testimony about the bloodhound, and that Ford had made improper statements in his closing argument, including, "The defendant has got to explain something to you," in violation of Taylor's right not to testify.
The North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 1994. It said the evidence was sufficient, the bloodhound testimony was admissible, and the prosecutor's comments were a comment on the credibility of Taylor's statements to the police rather than his decision not to testify.
Taylor then moved for post-conviction relief. His motion said that Dodd had provided ineffective representation and also presented evidence from two men who said they were in the same cell block with Taylor at the Wake County Jail, but never saw Andrews or heard Taylor make any statements about the murder.
At an evidentiary hearing, Officer Jonni Joyce, a dog trainer and canine handler with the police department in nearby Zebulon, said, "I don't believe that the conclusion that the dog connected the victim's scent to the car is accurate." She said the wet weather would have kept the scent down, hampering the dog's ability to track it.
In addition, Joyce said attacked the state's theory of the crime that Thomas was killed in the cul-de-sac and then Taylor drove up the service road and got stuck in the mud. If true, she said, there wouldn't have been a scent trail to follow. More likely, Joyce testified, Sadie re-alerted to the vehicle after she lost the sent and had a "conditioned reward-based response."
Currin also testified and appeared to backtrack on parts of his trial testimony. He said that he had been told the location of the Pathfinder when he and Sadie arrived at the crime scene, and that he had told his supervisors that day-as well as on previous occasions-that Sadie was not trained to track scents from a dead body.
On December 10, 1998, a judge denied Taylor's motion for relief. Taylor filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in 1999. This also asserted ineffective representation by Dodd and Adams. Judge Malcolm Howard dismissed the claim on September 11, 2000.
In 2003, Taylor moved for DNA testing of the semen found in Thomas's panties. The state opposed the motion, arguing that there was no evidence suggesting that the murderer had sex with Thomas. A judge in Wake County denied the motion on April 10, 2003, writing: "The absence of defendant's DNA in the dried semen stains found on the victim, a prostitute, would not be exculpatory. To the contrary, such absence would further support the state's contention that the defendant became upset with the victim while smoking cocaine together after the victim refused to have sex with him, causing the defendant to beat and stab her."
In 2006, Chris Mumma at the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence (NCCAI) began representing Taylor. Also in 2006, the North Carolina General Assembly created the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a state agency that investigates and evaluates post-conviction claims of factual innocence. It is the only such commission in the United States.
While NCAAI did the initial investigation, Taylor eventually submitted his case for review by the commission, which began in 2007.
The commission's staff interviewed Craig Taylor, a former drug dealer who lived in Raleigh at the time of Thomas's death. Taylor, who was no relation to Greg Taylor, implicated himself in the murder. "There ain't no one else," Craig Taylor said. "I don't take the fall for no one."
In addition, DNA testing performed at the request of the commission excluded Taylor as a contributor to the genetic material.
Based on Taylor's statements, the DNA testing, and other evidence gathered during the review, the commission's staff brought Taylor's case before the commission members. During two days of hearings in September 2009, the eight commissioners heard the evidence and then voted unanimously to refer the case to a panel of three superior court judges to decide whether to declare Taylor innocent.
The judges held four days of hearings in February 2010. At the hearing, the judges heard that the state had used misleading terminology to describe the forensic evidence that indicated the presence of blood on Taylor's Pathfinder. While the preliminary tests were positive, the follow-up tests were negative. The reports given to the prosecutor by the SBI did not mention the negative tests, only the initial finding.
SBI Agent Duane Deaver, who performed the testing, testified that in these instances when a second test was negative, the agency's policy was to state only that there was a chemical indication for the presence of blood. Deaver did not testify at the trial.
Taylor testified at the hearing, again asserting his innocence. Colon Willoughby, the Wake County District Attorney, urged the judges to reject the commission's recommendations. He said Craig Taylor's confessions were riddled with holes and that Greg Taylor had "testified to things that are not logical, credible or believable."
On February 17, 2010, the panel ruled that Taylor had "proved by clear and convincing evidence" that he was innocent of murder in Thomas's death. Taylor was released from prison that day, greeted by his father and his daughter, who had been 8 years old when he went to prison. Taylor's case was the first exoneration produced through the work of the Innocence Inquiry Commission.
After the ruling, Willoughby apologized to Taylor. So did Ford, his assistant. Willoughby told the Associated Press, "I told him I'm very sorry he was convicted. I wish we had had all of this evidence in 1991."
On May 21, 2010, Governor Beverly Perdue granted Taylor a pardon based on innocence. Taylor was awarded $750,000 in state compensation and in August 2013, the state agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Taylor for $4.625 million.
-Stephanie Denzel and Ken Otterbourg
While officers were processing the crime scene, 29-year-old Gregory Taylor came by to pick up his Nissan Pathfinder, which was stuck in the mud on a service road about 150 yards away.
Taylor was brought in for questioning, and he told Detective Johnny Howard that he and Johnny Beck had driven up the road the night before, got stuck while four-wheeling, and then walked down the service road. Taylor said they saw a body in the cul-de-sac but kept walking and didn't call the police. Taylor said the body hadn't been there when they drove up the service road. Taylor also said he had never seen Thomas before and had no contact with her that night.
During the interview, Howard showed Taylor photos of Thomas and told her that she had died a horrible death. Taylor asked Howard, "How did she die? Did someone cut her throat?"
Although Taylor asserted his innocence, Howard told him that he had a choice to make, "whether you want to be a witness or you want to be a defendant. Whether you want to be truthful with me or whether you want to stick to this story that I can prove is wrong and then you be charged with something that maybe John done."
Howard told Taylor that luminol testing, a chemical test which identifies the presence of blood, had been performed at the crime scene, and revealed the presence of blood on his SUV.
That was false-the testing hadn't been performed. Howard also falsely said a witness had seen Taylor near the crime scene. As the interview continued, Taylor revised his account of the night and said that he and Beck had been smoking crack cocaine in the Pathfinder in the early morning when the vehicle got stuck.
Taylor and Beck were arrested later that day and charged with murder.
In 1992 and 1993, 16 months into preparation for his trial, Taylor's attorney, James Blackburn, surrendered his law license after it came out that he had embezzled fees from his law firm. Blackburn was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder as well.
Taylor's trial in Wake County Superior Court began on April 13, 1993. He was now represented by Michael Dodd, along with R.L. Adams.
Agent Donald Pagani, a forensic technician with the City-County Bureau of Identification in Wake County, testified, although not as an expert witness, about processing the crime scene. He said the Taylor's Pathfinder was dusted for fingerprints but that no prints "matching" Thomas were found on the vehicle. He also testified about the luminol and other testing performed on the Pathfinder to detect the presence of blood. He said that based on tire impressions at the crime scene, officials "had very good reason to believe at that point that a vehicle had passed through the blood of the victim."
Pagani said the testing showed a positive reaction to blood on the vehicle's undercarriage, but there were also other areas where the testing did not indicate the presence of blood. The tires on the Pathfinder were also subjected to luminol testing, but there were no positive reactions.
Agent William Hensley, Pagani's supervisor at the crime bureau, testified that luminol placed in the cul-de-sac where Thomas's body was found reacted to linear marks on the pavement that appeared to be tire tracks. The tracks, he testified, "went by the body probably through the pool of blood by the head and left arm area and then it traveled in a northerly direction, turned sharply, went back to a southern direction and then went in a southeasterly direction up towards the path" to the service road.
Hensley testified that the lack of blood on the tires was most likely because the Pathfinder had spun its wheels after getting stuck in the mud.
Andy Currin, a former dog handler with the Raleigh Police Department, testified as an expert witness about his use of scent tracking at the crime scene. Because Sadie, a bloodhound, was trained to track the scent of live people, not dead individuals, Dodd argued against admitting Currin's testimony. Judge J.B. Allen Jr. denied that motion.
Currin said that when he and Sadie arrived at the crime scene, he laid some sterile gauze over part of Thomas's body, then removed the gauze and walked about 25 feet away. There, he allowed Sadie to smell the object and gave her a command to "find."
Currin said the dog zig-zagged toward the vehicle but lost the scent trail and returned to him. He said he tried again, now starting about 30 feet from the Pathfinder. This time, Sadie "jumped up" on both sides of the vehicle, which Currin testified indicated that Thomas's scent was somewhere on the SUV.
On cross-examination, Currin testified that he could not see the Pathfinder from the original starting place. He also said he could not remember if an officer told him that the police were trying to obtain a search warrant for the vehicle. He said that he had told his supervisors on previous occasions that Sadie was not trained to track a scent from a dead body. He also testified that Sadie was "real reliable."
Prosecutors presented a report from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) that said there was a chemical indication for the presence of blood on the bumper of the Pathfinder.
Dr. Deborah Radisch, the state's associate chief medical examiner, who had performed the autopsy on Thomas the day after her body was found, testified that Thomas had two types of wounds: cutting wounds and blunt force trauma wounds, which suggested that two types of weapons had been used in the murder. The cutting wounds included lacerations to her neck, face, and chest, Radisch said.
Howard testified that he was at the crime scene when Taylor and his wife showed up at around 8:30 a.m. By then, officers had already run the license plate on the Pathfinder.
Howard said his first interview with Taylor lasted about 45 minutes, and he didn't believe Taylor's account of the evening. During the second interview, Howard said, Taylor admitted to smoking crack. The jury heard the recording of the interview.
During cross-examination, Howard testified that Taylor cooperated with the police, giving officers contact information for Johnny Beck and allowing them to search his house. He also testified that he had repeatedly lied to Taylor during the interrogation. He said he had falsely told him that a witness had already identified him and that Beck had pinned the murder on Taylor. Howard said this was an investigative technique designed to get at the truth.
Howard also testified that he showed Thomas's photo to Taylor and that Taylor had asked whether her throat had been cut. He said a Polaroid photo was too tightly framed to indicate how Thomas had died.
Eva Marie Kelly, a sex worker, testified that on the night Thomas died, Taylor's Pathfinder stopped in front of her house and the passenger, who was a Black man, called her over. (Beck is Black.) A white man was driving, Kelly said, and he asked her to "party" with them. Kelly said she refused, and the men drove off.
Later that night, Kelly testified, she saw the two men in the rooming house where she lived. They were at a table doing drugs with two other sex workers, "Jackie" and "Whoopie." Kelly said she left for about 45 minutes, and when she returned, the two men were leaving with Jackie.
Kelly identified Taylor as the white man she saw leaving with Jackie. At the time of the trial, Kelly faced two probation violations, each with a five-year sentence. In exchange for Kelly's testimony, the Wake County District Attorney's Office agreed to not oppose concurrent sentences.
Kelly testified that the police never showed her any photo arrays of potential suspects. More importantly, she testified that the police showed her a photo of Thomas on October 1, 1991, and that she told the police the victim was not the woman she knew as "Jackie." Jackie, she said, was someone else she knew from the streets.
Kelly said, "The girl Jackie that I saw with these two men, you know, when they came out of my house, and that dead body still doesn't look like the same person."
Ernest Andrews testified that he was in the Wake County Jail when he spoke with Taylor. At the time, Andrews was awaiting transfer to a state prison after being convicted of embezzlement, and he had a lengthy record of convictions on similar charges.
Andrews testified that Taylor told him he was in jail on a murder charge. In response to a question from another person about how the victim died, Andrews said Taylor said the victim had "died with a smile on her face, that her throat was cut from ear to ear." According to Andrews, "He never said that he cut her throat, and he never said the Black guy cut her throat."
Andrews testified that in a later conversation, Taylor said that prior to the murder, he and his friend were "partying" with the woman when she got upset. According to Andrews, Taylor said he hit the woman, and she jumped out of the vehicle. The other man jumped out and ran after her. When the other man returned, he said the woman "wouldn't be partying anymore."
Taylor did not testify, and his attorney presented no other witnesses. On April 18, 1993, after less than two hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Taylor of first-degree murder and acquitted him of accessory after the fact to murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
According to the News & Observer of Raleigh, the state had tried to get Taylor to implicate Beck by offering to commute his sentence. "If the state is forced to enter a dismissal in Mr. Beck's case because of Mr. Taylor's refusal to cooperate, we will consider any offer we made him to be forever withdrawn," wrote Tom Ford, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case. But Taylor declined to implicate Beck.
On August 18, 1993, the state dismissed the charges against Beck.
Taylor appealed, arguing that there had been insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction, that Judge Allen had erred in admitting the testimony about the bloodhound, and that Ford had made improper statements in his closing argument, including, "The defendant has got to explain something to you," in violation of Taylor's right not to testify.
The North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 1994. It said the evidence was sufficient, the bloodhound testimony was admissible, and the prosecutor's comments were a comment on the credibility of Taylor's statements to the police rather than his decision not to testify.
Taylor then moved for post-conviction relief. His motion said that Dodd had provided ineffective representation and also presented evidence from two men who said they were in the same cell block with Taylor at the Wake County Jail, but never saw Andrews or heard Taylor make any statements about the murder.
At an evidentiary hearing, Officer Jonni Joyce, a dog trainer and canine handler with the police department in nearby Zebulon, said, "I don't believe that the conclusion that the dog connected the victim's scent to the car is accurate." She said the wet weather would have kept the scent down, hampering the dog's ability to track it.
In addition, Joyce said attacked the state's theory of the crime that Thomas was killed in the cul-de-sac and then Taylor drove up the service road and got stuck in the mud. If true, she said, there wouldn't have been a scent trail to follow. More likely, Joyce testified, Sadie re-alerted to the vehicle after she lost the sent and had a "conditioned reward-based response."
Currin also testified and appeared to backtrack on parts of his trial testimony. He said that he had been told the location of the Pathfinder when he and Sadie arrived at the crime scene, and that he had told his supervisors that day-as well as on previous occasions-that Sadie was not trained to track scents from a dead body.
On December 10, 1998, a judge denied Taylor's motion for relief. Taylor filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in 1999. This also asserted ineffective representation by Dodd and Adams. Judge Malcolm Howard dismissed the claim on September 11, 2000.
In 2003, Taylor moved for DNA testing of the semen found in Thomas's panties. The state opposed the motion, arguing that there was no evidence suggesting that the murderer had sex with Thomas. A judge in Wake County denied the motion on April 10, 2003, writing: "The absence of defendant's DNA in the dried semen stains found on the victim, a prostitute, would not be exculpatory. To the contrary, such absence would further support the state's contention that the defendant became upset with the victim while smoking cocaine together after the victim refused to have sex with him, causing the defendant to beat and stab her."
In 2006, Chris Mumma at the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence (NCCAI) began representing Taylor. Also in 2006, the North Carolina General Assembly created the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a state agency that investigates and evaluates post-conviction claims of factual innocence. It is the only such commission in the United States.
While NCAAI did the initial investigation, Taylor eventually submitted his case for review by the commission, which began in 2007.
The commission's staff interviewed Craig Taylor, a former drug dealer who lived in Raleigh at the time of Thomas's death. Taylor, who was no relation to Greg Taylor, implicated himself in the murder. "There ain't no one else," Craig Taylor said. "I don't take the fall for no one."
In addition, DNA testing performed at the request of the commission excluded Taylor as a contributor to the genetic material.
Based on Taylor's statements, the DNA testing, and other evidence gathered during the review, the commission's staff brought Taylor's case before the commission members. During two days of hearings in September 2009, the eight commissioners heard the evidence and then voted unanimously to refer the case to a panel of three superior court judges to decide whether to declare Taylor innocent.
The judges held four days of hearings in February 2010. At the hearing, the judges heard that the state had used misleading terminology to describe the forensic evidence that indicated the presence of blood on Taylor's Pathfinder. While the preliminary tests were positive, the follow-up tests were negative. The reports given to the prosecutor by the SBI did not mention the negative tests, only the initial finding.
SBI Agent Duane Deaver, who performed the testing, testified that in these instances when a second test was negative, the agency's policy was to state only that there was a chemical indication for the presence of blood. Deaver did not testify at the trial.
Taylor testified at the hearing, again asserting his innocence. Colon Willoughby, the Wake County District Attorney, urged the judges to reject the commission's recommendations. He said Craig Taylor's confessions were riddled with holes and that Greg Taylor had "testified to things that are not logical, credible or believable."
On February 17, 2010, the panel ruled that Taylor had "proved by clear and convincing evidence" that he was innocent of murder in Thomas's death. Taylor was released from prison that day, greeted by his father and his daughter, who had been 8 years old when he went to prison. Taylor's case was the first exoneration produced through the work of the Innocence Inquiry Commission.
After the ruling, Willoughby apologized to Taylor. So did Ford, his assistant. Willoughby told the Associated Press, "I told him I'm very sorry he was convicted. I wish we had had all of this evidence in 1991."
On May 21, 2010, Governor Beverly Perdue granted Taylor a pardon based on innocence. Taylor was awarded $750,000 in state compensation and in August 2013, the state agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Taylor for $4.625 million.
-Stephanie Denzel and Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 10-16-2024
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Case Details:
State:
North Carolina
County:
Wake
Most Serious Crime:
Murder
Reported Crime Date:
1991
Convicted:
1993
Exonerated:
2010
Sentence:
Life
Race / Ethnicity:
White
Sex:
Male
Age at the date of reported crime:
29
Contributing Factors:
Mistaken Witness ID, False or Misleading Forensic Evidence, Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct, Inadequate Legal Defense
Did DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration?:
Yes