State prosecutors filed a petition this week asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to review a judge’s order exonerating four men convicted as teenagers of murdering NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather.
Prosecutors concede they are asking the state’s highest court to do something out of the ordinary in bypassing the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which initially hears the majority of criminal appeals. Death penalty cases are the only ones that are appealed directly to the state Supreme Court.
But Heidi M. Williams, special deputy attorney general, said the case demands immediate review by the state Supreme Court for several reasons, including the high-profile nature of the case and because it involves “legal principles of major significance to the jurisprudence of the state.”
Williams argues that any “delay in final adjudication poses a risk of substantial harm” and that the appeal is “important in overseeing the integrity of the court system.”
Two decades ago, five teenagers—Nathaniel Cauthen, Rayshawn Banner, Christopher Bryant, Jermal Tolliver, and the late Dorrell Brayboy—were convicted in two separate trials of murdering 61-year-old Nathaniel Jones, who was believed to have been the proprietor of the first Black-owned service station in North Carolina. Winston-Salem police said Jones was attacked soon after he arrived at his East Winston-Salem home on November 15, 2002, beaten in the head and face, and left to die of a cardiac arrhythmia. Jones was found lying face-down in his carport near his Lincoln Town Car. His hands were tied behind his back with black tape, and his mouth was taped shut. His wallet was missing.
Five days later, Paul, a high school senior who had just signed to play basketball at Wake Forest University, scored 61 points in his grandfather’s honor. The moment catapulted the teenager into the national limelight. Paul went on to play for several NBA teams, most recently the Los Angeles Clippers.
The men have long maintained their innocence, alleging that police used harsh interrogation techniques to coerce them into making false confessions. No definitive physical evidence, including fingerprints, tied them to the crime scene. New questions were raised after the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission started investigating and discovered that the key witness, Jessicah Black, recanted. The commission also ordered DNA testing on some of the physical evidence in the case, which found none of the DNA matched the five men or Black.
Black’s recantation partially led Superior Court Judge Robert Broadie to issue a 33-page ruling exonerating the four living men (Brayboy was murdered a year after his release from prison) and dismissing charges against them with prejudice last August. That meant they could not be retried and made prosecutors’ ability to appeal Broadie’s ruling more difficult.
But within hours, prosecutors sought to appeal. They also asked the Court of Appeals to temporarily prevent Cauthen and Banner, who are serving life sentences for first-degree murder, from being released. The court granted the temporary stay but denied a more permanent stay in September, saying that prosecutors had not “meritoriously” argued that any errors existed in Broadie’s ruling and had “failed to articulate a clear right to appeal.”
State prosecutors appealed to the state Supreme Court, which blocked the brothers’ release.
This latest move comes after attorneys for the men sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Jackson on October 6, saying all four men would agree to be retried in exchange for Banner and Cauthen being released on bond. The attorney general’s office declined the offer on November 24, saying it needed Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill to agree.
If prosecutors retried the case, they’d likely have difficulty securing a conviction. The defense has new evidence about the men’s intellectual disabilities at the time they were interrogated. Their statements at the time of their arrest, which were inconsistent with each other and with the physical evidence, would likely be suppressed. And without Black’s original testimony, there are no eyewitnesses who could testify they saw the five teenagers at Jones’ house the night he died.
Prosecutors also would have no clear right to appeal to the state Supreme Court if they lost at the Court of Appeals. It is a possibility that Williams alludes to in her petition: “The State recognizes, however, that if the trial court’s order is affirmed on appeal, Defendants are entitled by the terms of that order to have their convictions vacated and, in the cases of Defendants Banner and Cauthen, to unconditional release from prison.”
Christine Mumma, the attorney representing Banner and Cauthen, said state prosecutors are trying to bypass the Court of Appeals because they will likely lose there and won’t have a chance to have the top court review the case.
“This is an attempt to go around the controls built into the law and the appellate procedure and get somewhere they would never get,” she said.
Nazneen Ahmed, spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office, declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Mumma said this process has been brutal for Banner and Cauthen, whose mother had prepared for their return to their Winston-Salem home.
“They don’t understand how they’re exonerated and they’re still sitting in prison,” she said.