Charles McNeair Spent His Adult Life in Prison. At 63, He’ll Go Home.

After 46 years in prison, Charles Anthony McNeair is finally coming home to Lexington. 

On April 23, McNeair, now 63, learned that the N.C. Post Release Supervision and Parole Commission had granted him parole. He is set to be released on Sunday. 

It was a long time coming. In January, McNeair had his 30th parole hearing. All 29 previous requests had been denied, even as questions about his original conviction mounted. 

“I’m just thrilled that he will have an opportunity to be reunited with his family,” said Jamie Lau, a supervising attorney for the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at Duke University School of Law who has represented McNeair. 

As The Assembly previously reported, McNeair, who is Black, was just 16 when Lexington police officers arrested him on charges that he broke into a white woman’s home and raped her while holding a claw hammer and a screwdriver. McNeair maintained his innocence, even as police linked him to four other attacks on white women without any clear evidence. 

The court-appointed attorney in his initial case gave him a stark choice: He could either plead guilty to second-degree rape and breaking and entering and be sentenced to life in prison, or risk a conviction at trial and possibly get the death penalty–even though North Carolina had stopped executing people for rape at that time. McNeair took the plea deal, believing it was his only option. He has been in prison ever since. 

A defendant convicted on the same charges today would likely face a maximum of 10 years in prison. 

For decades, McNeair’s family, including his mother, fought to get him out of prison and clear his name. But there were few avenues for challenging the convictions. McNeair pleaded guilty, and police didn’t appear to have much physical evidence when they charged him, meaning there was little that could be tested for DNA as that technology advanced. 

In September 2022, Lau filed a clemency petition with the Juvenile Sentence Review Board that former Gov. Roy Cooper established the previous year. The petition seemed like McNeair’s only chance at freedom. 

A coalition of Lexington residents formed to lobby Cooper to grant clemency. The Lexington City Council passed a resolution supporting the petition in 2023, and last year, Lexington Police Chief Robby Rummage wrote a letter asking current Gov. Josh Stein to seriously consider granting McNeair clemency. 

The chief wrote that he had helped convict murderers who had since been released while McNeair remained in prison. He noted that his department no longer had the investigative file from the 1979 case. 

“What remains is a troubling gap: We have no documentation of the investigation that led to Mr. McNeair’s life sentence,” Rummage wrote. “The limited materials we do have do not present a coherent narrative and do not pertain to the offense in question.”

Rummage said Tuesday that he is happy that McNeair is being released. 

“I feel the right decision was made,” he said. 

Stein has not taken action on the clemency petition, and his office has previously declined to comment. The request is moot now that McNeair has received parole. Wanda Cox, a former showroom and interior designer who has emerged as McNeair’s fiercest advocate, said she is thrilled, and McNeair is thankful for Lau’s work and all of the support he has gotten from the community. 

“Charles has always deserved freedom,” she said. “He spent his entire life in an environment that would break most of us…We’re grateful that the parole board has made the decision to free him and I hope that they continue reviewing cases for others in a timely manner going forward.” 

Rev. Lester Smith, who helped lead the advocacy efforts for McNeair, said he’s still processing the news. 

“Once we see him and are able to sit with him outside of those bars would be the thing that would really solidify for us that he is home,” he said. 

Outside a Winn-Dixie

In 1979, Lexington, a city in Davidson County 20 miles south of Winston-Salem, was like many small communities in North Carolina. Black people lived on one side of town and white people lived on the other. 

Many white people frowned on interracial relationships, and as elsewhere in the South, Black men accused of raping white women faced harsh and sometimes deadly repercussions, either through lynch mobs or the criminal justice system. 

In the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan was active in Lexington. District Attorney Butch Zimmerman, who prosecuted McNeair’s case, was known for the collection of Confederate memorabilia he kept in his office, and for regaling defense attorneys with tales of slaveowners raping enslaved Black women. 

McNeair has said he and the woman had a consensual relationship. He said the two met in October 1979 outside a Winn-Dixie store, where he hustled for tips in exchange for helping customers carry groceries to their vehicles. He said they hung out together, drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, and making out. In an interview with the High Point Enterprise, McNeair said he told the woman he was 21. She was 57.

On November 25, 1979, the woman invited McNeair to her house, he said. He wore striped khakis, a thin brown dress shirt, and tasseled loafers. He said the woman let him in through the back door, as she had done before, and she plied him with alcohol and marijuana. She told him that he had to leave before 12:30 a.m. because she was expecting company. 

They kissed but he believed he passed out before it went any further, he told The Assembly in 2023. Next thing he knew, Lexington police officer Roy Owens was beating him over the head and he was taken to the police station, where McNeair said officers continued to beat him while demanding he confess to raping the woman. McNeair said he tried to tell the officers he didn’t do anything, but they didn’t believe him.

McNeair was scared. “I felt like they were going to try to hang me,” he said.

Lexington police released few details, including no mention of how McNeair could have raped the woman while holding a hammer and a screwdriver; whether the police seized the two weapons and sent them to the State Crime Lab for testing; or whether they collected a rape kit, which might have provided evidence of sexual trauma. Police also never said how McNeair allegedly broke into the house or if investigators found evidence to suggest forced entry, such as a broken window or door. 

The woman died in 1992 at the age of 69. Her family has declined to comment. 

More than 40 years after McNeair was charged, many questions linger, and The Assembly tried in 2023 to piece the case against him together. Crucial information was missing, lacked detail, or suggested a confusing set of allegations against McNeair. The Assembly filed a motion asking the Lexington Police Department to release the criminal investigative file, which is normally not a public record. But it appeared that the Lexington police officials destroyed the investigative file years ago. 

Over the last four decades, McNeair and his family, along with an ever-growing group of supporters, have fought to free him. And in that time, everyone involved in that case—the woman, the officers who arrested him, the prosecutor, and the judge—have all died. Rallies have been held in Lexington and Raleigh to push the governor to act. 

McNeair has had his share of losses. His parents have long passed. He’s lost two sisters and one brother. But he still has family, including an uncle, Belvin McNair, who is setting up a house for him to live in.

Bittersweet Victory

Parole is not exoneration. Charles McNeair will still be considered a convicted felon in the eyes of the state. 

For the next five years, McNeair will have to report to a parole officer and comply with any conditions of his parole, said Keith Acree, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Adult Corrections. That will include abstaining from alcohol and drug use, submitting to drug tests, and residing in a location approved by his parole officer, according to Acree.

He has not been a free man since November 1979. It won’t be an easy adjustment. 

The road to get here has been rocky. The Assembly reported in 2024 that McNeair had been moved between correctional facilities seven times in less than two years. Many supporters believed it was punishment for the growing movement to grant him clemency. 

One move was prompted by an allegation that McNeair had assaulted a group of white inmates. McNeair said he didn’t do anything. But the next day, he was moved from Davidson Correctional Center to Wilkes Correctional Center, which not only took him further away from his family but also offered fewer programs. 

In response to a grievance McNeair filed, a prison official wrote that McNeair had “become too familiar with the facility, staff and volunteers,” and complained that McNeair’s supporters were dropping by the facility to deliver cards. 

“I know that it’s been a high-profile case for a long time, trying to get him clemency and all that,” said then-Warden Steven Niday in a brief interview. “So we thought it was best to move him way back when we did.”

Supporters also criticized the involvement of Joy Smith, a part-time case analyst with the state Parole Commission. A federal lawsuit from Brett Abrams, who is serving life in prison with parole for a murder he committed when he was 14, accused her of hampering people’s chances at release by omitting or providing incomplete information. Smith did not respond to a request for comment. The suit was settled in September.

It is not clear what led the Parole Commission to release McNeair. In some of his previous rejection letters, the commission said his release would “unduly depreciate the seriousness of the crime or promote disrespect for the law.”

Lau said that while many people are happy that McNeair will finally be free, he also hopes that they will give him some space to settle into this new life. 

“These transitions can be challenging,” Lau said. “They come with anxieties that people can’t understand. It’s going to be a slow process for Charles to feel completely at home.” 

Back in 2023, McNeair told The Assembly how much he loved spending time outdoors. It gave him peace of mind while waiting to find out if he would get either clemency or parole. And he said he knew what he would do if he walked out of prison, where he’s been confined his entire adult life. 

“I would kiss the ground, first, really,” he said. 

On Sunday, he will get a chance to do exactly that.