Update: The N.C Supreme Court denied on December 23 a motion to dismiss a stay keeping Rayshawn Banner and Nathaniel Cauthen in prison. Justices Richard Dietz, Allison Riggs and Anita Earls dissented. The ruling means that the two men will remain imprisoned while prosecutors appeal a judge’s decision exonerating them and two others in the 2002 murder of NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather, a process that could take several years.
Four men convicted as teenagers of killing NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather were willing to be retried after a judge exonerated them nearly four months ago if it meant that two of the men still imprisoned might be released. But state Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s office nixed the offer, the men’s attorneys said in a new court filing Wednesday.
Brothers Nathaniel Cauthen and Rayshawn Banner are serving life sentences for the murder of Nathaniel Jones. The two were teenagers at the time, as were the three others accused of the crime—Christopher Bryant, Jermal Tolliver, and the late Dorrell Brayboy. Bryant, Tolliver, and Brayboy were convicted of second-degree murder. Bryant and Tolliver were released in 2017. Brayboy got out of prison in 2018 but was murdered a year later.
All five men said Winston-Salem police used harsh interrogation tactics to coerce them into making false confessions. Police said the group brutally attacked Jones, 61, in the carport of his East Winston-Salem home on November 15, 2002. Police said they beat him, tied him up with black tape, and left him to die of a cardiac arrhythmia brought on by the stress of the attack.
Superior Court Judge Robert Broadie issued a 33-page ruling in August exonerating the four living men and dismissing charges against them with prejudice, meaning they could not be retried. State prosecutors with the N.C. attorney general’s office got the state Supreme Court to stay Broadie’s ruling while they appeal it. That effectively prevented Cauthen and Banner from being released from prison.
Christine Mumma represents Cauthen and Banner. Mark Rabil is Tolliver’s attorney, and Brad Bannon represents Bryant. The three attorneys sent the attorney general’s office a letter on October 6 saying that all four men would agree to be retried for Jones’ murder, the attorneys said in the filing Wednesday.
In exchange, the letter said, they wanted Banner and Cauthen released on bond and to be notified within 60 days if prosecutors planned to retry the men. The attorney general’s office declined the offer on November 24, saying it needed Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill to agree before going forward.
It wasn’t clear from the motion whether O’Neill was notified about the offer. O’Neill did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Nazneen Ahmed, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
The men’s attorneys filed a motion Wednesday asking the N.C. Supreme Court to dismiss the permanent stay issued October 1 that blocked the release of Banner and Cauthen from prison.
They said the court should dissolve the stay because the “incarceration of Mr. Banner and Mr. Cauthen in the meantime perpetuates an injustice that began more than 23 years ago, when they and their co-defendants were wrongly incarcerated.”
Though the men had claimed innocence for years, a turning point occurred more than six years ago when the key witness, Jessicah Black, recanted her testimony that likely contributed to their convictions. She has since testified in multiple court hearings that Winston-Salem police coerced her into making false statements.
Broadie said in his ruling that her recantation was credible and that without her false testimony, it is unlikely that a jury would have convicted the men.
If prosecutors retried the case, they’d have difficulty securing a conviction. The defense has new evidence about the men’s intellectual disabilities at the time they were interrogated. Their statements, which were inconsistent with each other and with the physical evidence, would likely be suppressed.
There is no definitive physical evidence, including DNA, that ties the men to the crime scene. And without Black’s original testimony, there are no eyewitnesses who could testify that they saw the men at Jones’ house the night he died.
Paul, who this week was abruptly cut from the Los Angeles Clippers, has not made any public statements about the recent developments in the case. In his 2023 memoir, Sixty-One: Life Lessons from Papa, On and Off the Court, Paul said he still believed the men were guilty but was conflicted about their lengthy sentences. His family has also said they believe the men committed the crime.
Mumma declined to comment on the motion. It is not clear when the state Supreme Court will rule on it.