A Contested Exoneration

A three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday about why the exoneration of four men convicted of killing retired NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather should be thrown out. 

The hearing comes almost exactly a year after Superior Court Judge Robert Broadie dismissed murder charges against the four men—Christopher Bryant, Jermal Tolliver, Nathaniel Cauthen, and Rayshawn Banner—in the 2002 death of Nathaniel Jones, who was 61.

Prosecutors allege that on November 15, 2002, five teenagers, including the late Dorrell Brayboy, attempted to rob Jones, the owner of a gas station in Winston-Salem, after he got home from work. They said the boys brutally beat Jones in the carport of his East Winston-Salem home, tied him up with black tape, and left him to die of a cardiac arrhythmia. 

The teens claimed innocence and said detectives coerced them into making false confessions. Winston-Salem police never recovered any definitive physical evidence tying them to the crime scene. But what ultimately led to their convictions in two separate trials was the testimony of Jessicah Black, a 16-year-old from Davidson County who had befriended the boys. 

More than 20 years later, however, new questions about the case emerged after Black recanted her testimony, saying that Winston-Salem police coerced her into making false statements. Those questions soon culminated in a three-week evidentiary hearing held in Forsyth Superior Court in January 2025. Seven months later, Broadie issued a 33-page ruling exonerating the remaining four men (Brayboy was stabbed to death in 2019) and dismissing all charges against them with prejudice, which would preclude a new trial.  

It was an extraordinary and stunning repudiation of the prominent narrative surrounding Jones’ 2002 death. The ruling was also the culmination of a long and twisty journey. The four men filed claims with the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission (now known as the N.C. Post-Conviction Review Commission) that led to a 2022 hearing before a three-judge panel that upheld their convictions. The men then filed a separate appeal in Forsyth Superior Court resulting in last year’s evidentiary hearing and eventual exoneration. 

At the hearing Tuesday, state prosecutors Heidi Williams and Nicholaos Vlahos argued two things. First, they said that Broadie erred in exonerating the men based on several claims, including ineffective assistance of counsel and new DNA evidence. They also argued that Broadie abused his discretion in finding that Black’s recantation was credible. 

Secondly, the prosecutors argued that even if Broadie was right in exonerating the men, his remedy—dismissing the charges with prejudice—was inappropriate and contrary to state law. 

Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill, whose office prosecuted the case, attended the hearing. Asked for comment, he said he was glad that state prosecutors with the Attorney General’s office “joined our efforts to preserve the convictions of the defendants.” 

“I am sorry that the Jones family is still unable to get closure and peace in the killing of their loved one,” he continued. “At some point I hope the legislature takes a look at our appellate process, to prevent this from happening to other North Carolina victim’s families. The convictions in this particular case have been upheld over the years by every court in North Carolina, including a three-judge panel. And yet, the case goes on and on.”

He said the current appeal litigated the same issues that the three-judge panel reviewed. O’Neill, who has strongly criticized the Innocence Commission’s work in the past as unfair, said the legislature should create a “counterweight” in the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys that can respond to the commission’s inquiries.  

Members of the Jones family also attended. His daughters have previously said they believe the men are guilty. Paul, who retired from the NBA earlier this year after 21 seasons, released a book about his grandfather in 2023 in which he said he believed in the men’s guilt but was conflicted about such lengthy prison sentences for teenagers. He has not made any public statements about the case since then. 

Brad Bannon, one of the attorneys for the men, argued that state law allows Broadie to dismiss the charges with prejudice. Broadie found Black’s recantation credible and concluded that if she had testified truthfully at the original trials, it’s highly likely that the men would never have been convicted. Broadie also found that for a variety of reasons, the men’s confessions were unreliable evidence. 

Without those two pieces of evidence, Bannon said, the state’s case collapses. That’s why Broadie dismissed the charges with prejudice, knowing that prosecutors would have a nearly impossible task of retrying them. 

As The Assembly previously reported, there were numerous gaps in the evidence presented in the case. Winston-Salem police collected fingerprints and blood from the crime scene and tested the clothes the boys were wearing the night Jones died. None of it linked the boys to the crime scene. New forensic testing showed that none of the DNA matched the men or Black. 

The only physical evidence used to tie the boys to the crime scene was a shoe impression lifted from the top of Jones’ car. But even that wasn’t a definitive match to a shoe police seized from Banner, and the impression didn’t match any of the other shoes police seized from the teens.

Williams contended that Broadie abused his discretion in ignoring alleged inconsistencies in Black’s testimony. Black testified for six hours, four and a half of them under cross-examination, Bannon said. He argued that Broadie had every opportunity to consider whether Black’s testimony was credible, and he determined that it was. 

The judges did not make a decision on Tuesday, which is standard for this type of hearing. It will likely be several months before they issue a ruling.