The Innocence Commission Lives On in State Budget. The Name Does Not.

The country’s only state-funded agency devoted to investigating post-conviction innocence claims has survived an attempt by state Senate Republicans to abolish it last year. 

And it has a new name. Once known as the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, it is now the N.C. Post-Conviction Review Commission, a name its executive director, Laura Pierro, says more accurately reflects the agency’s purpose. The commission not only frees innocent people but also helps law enforcement confirm people’s guilt. 

The agency currently has a $1.6 million budget, a staff of 12 full-time employees, and one part-time employee. 

“We’re obviously thrilled,” Pierro said Wednesday. “We’re very grateful to the senators for the reconsideration of their position and to members of the House who supported us from the first instance.” 

State legislators established the commission in 2006 after several high-profile wrongful convictions, most notably that of the late Darryl Hunt. In 2004, Hunt, a Black man in Winston-Salem, was fully exonerated after spending 19 years in prison for the brutal rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, a white copy editor at the city’s afternoon newspaper, The Twin City Sentinel. New DNA evidence led investigators to another man, who ultimately confessed to the crime. 

Since 2007, the commission has reviewed 4,296 claims of actual innocence. But the journey from filing a claim to possible exoneration is long. The commission rejects more than 60% of all claims, and only 0.5% reach a hearing before it. Only after the agency’s investigators find sufficient evidence that the defendant is innocent is the case forwarded to a panel of three superior court judges, who determine if the defendant should be exonerated. 

The commission’s work has led to several high-profile exonerations, including that of Greg Taylor, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1993. The commission was also responsible for the exonerations of Leon Brown and Henry McCollum, two brothers with intellectual disabilities who authorities coerced into signing false confessions for the rape and murder of a young girl in 1983. Both men initially got the death penalty.

The agency was instrumental in the case of four Winston-Salem men convicted of murdering Nathaniel Jones, the grandfather of retired NBA star Chris Paul, in separate trials in 2004 and 2005. (Five men were convicted, but one of them was killed a year after he was released from prison.) Last August, a judge exonerated the men and dismissed their charges with prejudice, specifically noting a key witness’s recantation of her testimony. That witness, Jessicah Black, first recanted during a deposition with the commission’s investigators. An appeal of the judge’s ruling is pending before the N.C. Court of Appeals. 

Not counting the Nathaniel Jones case, the commission’s work has led to a total of 16 exonerations, most recently that of Clarence Roberts, whose name was cleared last year after a hearing before the three-judge panel. 

Some have questioned the commission’s effectiveness over the last few years, however. During a state Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last year, Republican Sen. Danny Britt said that the agency had failed to investigate enough cases. He said other nonprofit organizations, such as the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, could step in if the commission were abolished. 

“They could do that with no expense to the state,” Britt said. “That’s why we chose the cut.” 

Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill, who has run for state attorney general and lieutenant governor, blasted the commission’s handling of  two cases in Winston-Salem, including the murder of Nathaniel Jones, and urged the legislature to “act now and review the state-funded Innocence Commission and their free-wheeling expenditure of our taxpayer dollars.”

In 2021, Cleveland County District Attorney Michael Miller emailed then-House Speaker Tim Moore and said that the commission had “outlived its usefulness,” the News & Observer reported. Chuck Spahos, legislative liaison for the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, and O’Neill, a past president of the conference, were copied on the message. 

“It is my belief that they are quickly running out of cases that meet their charter mandate and have begun to actively seek ways to justify their crusade and perhaps even their very existence,” Miller said in the email.

Prosecutors also lobbied for a law passed in 2023 that imposes stricter rules on the admissibility of evidence at hearings before the three-judge panel. Critics argue that the rules aren’t needed because, unlike a jury, judges have experience weighing evidence. They say the measure now places a heavier burden on defendants trying to prove their innocence through the commission process. 

But Britt told The Assembly on Wednesday that he didn’t intend to abolish the commission. 

“We were just looking for cuts, and that seemed like one we could make at the time,” he said. “But we’re glad we didn’t have to make the cut.” 

Pierro, the agency’s executive director, said that once the cut was announced, she made a point of informing state legislators and other stakeholders about the commission’s role. She stressed that the commission’s job wasn’t only to free innocent people but, in some cases, to affirm a defendant’s guilt. 

“I think the Senate’s original action came without the full complement of information,” she said. 

At a recent judges’ conference, Pierro said she spoke to the three judges who heard Roberts’ case. One had previously raised concerns about the commission but walked away from last year’s hearing with his mind completely changed, she said. 

“I think originally, there was a lack of appreciation for what we brought to North Carolina,” she said. “That has now been solidified, and I’m hopeful that we can kind of all put that behind us.” 

Bryan Anderson contributed to this report.