Pitt County Residents Rally Around a Native Son

As Superior Court Judge Henry W. Hight Jr. opened a hearing in Pitt County last week, he saw a courtroom packed with supporters of James Richardson, who contends he was wrongfully convicted 14 years ago of a late-night, drive-by double murder in Greenville. 

Richardson’s lawyers said they have uncovered new evidence that pokes holes in the prosecution’s case and raises questions about whether crucial evidence was withheld from the defense. They argued Richardson should get a new trial. 

A growing swell of people from Pitt County and beyond have taken up Richardson’s cause, developing letter-writing campaigns and phone-tree strategies to share their concerns about what they fear is another wrongful conviction of a Black man in their county.

Among those at the courthouse that day was Dontae Sharpe. He spent 24 years in prison for murder before a judge vacated his Pitt County conviction in 2019 after finding that a key witness had fully fabricated her testimony.

Darron Carmon was there, too, sitting in the front row. He spent eight years in prison after being wrongfully convicted—also in Pitt County—of armed robbery. It took him 28 years to get his conviction vacated.

All three cases were prosecuted by retired District Attorney Clark Everett.

Richardson, a 6-foot-7-inch former pro basketball player in Europe and an NBA developmental league, was led into the courtroom in an orange prison jumpsuit for the hearing he’d long sought. Several dozen people who couldn’t get into the courtroom rallied outside in T-shirts with slogans such as “Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied” and “Free James Richardson.”

Richardson, 48, is serving two life terms at Caswell Correctional Center, northeast of Greensboro. He had no criminal record prior to his 2009 arrest.

Richardson’s lawyers spent a good portion of the morning presenting their case and sparring with prosecutors, who say Richardson got a fair trial. 

As Abe Rubert-Schewel, a civil rights attorney on the defense team, went back and forth with Pitt County Assistant District Attorney Joel Stadiem about whether a key witness at trial had testified truthfully, Richardson dabbed at his eyes with tissues a bailiff supplied.

Key Witness

A jury found Richardson guilty in 2011 in the drive-by shooting of Andrew Kirby, 29, and Landon Blackley, 21, on June 9, 2009, outside a downtown Greenville nightclub.

Since then, Rubert-Schewel told the judge, the defense team believes that Vidal Thorpe, a key witness for the prosecution, has backpedaled on what he told the jury.

On the night of the murders, Richardson, then 33 and recently retired from basketball, had gone with friends to the nightclub and gotten into a fight. Some people testified at trial that after the fight, Richardson and others in his group headed to a parking lot around the block. 

Thorpe was the only witness to testify that he saw Richardson shooting out of a white BMW that night. He said he knew it was Richardson because he’d played basketball with him before. Thorpe said Richardson was in the passenger’s seat, and there appeared to be two people in the car.

But after an investigator for the defense caught up with him in 2017, Thorpe said he had only seen an arm wielding a gun outside the rear passenger window. He recollected that three or four people were in the car, not one, as prosecutors contended throughout the trial.

When the investigator suggested that Thorpe had not seen a person or face, Thorpe replied “yeah,” according to the transcript Rubert-Schewel read in court last week. “I don’t even know why they had me testify to that,” Thorpe said.

Stadiem argued that the defense was cherry-picking statements from a broader interview to benefit a narrative. When the transcript was read in full, he argued, it showed a witness who was having difficulty remembering things from a traumatic event he tried to push from his memory.

“You can’t just sit here and edit a few things,” Stadiem said. “This is not a recantation.”

Richardson’s defense team would like to put Thorpe under oath and ask him more questions about what he did or didn’t see that night.

They also want to bring in experts to bolster their questions about the reliability of surveillance footage shown to the jury multiple times during the trial, and about ballistic reports, DNA, and fingerprint evidence. 

The Assembly has reported previously on those claims. Richardson’s lawyers say new evidence proves that the video was a misleading, low-quality copy of the original. 

Also, the new evidence includes affidavits from two forensic experts who tested the state’s theory by reconstructing the shooting. Both came to the same conclusion that shell casings from a pistol fired by someone in the driver’s seat would have landed inside the car, even if the shooter had been 6-foot-7. 

Instead, all casings were found outside the car. That supports eyewitness testimony that the shooter was in a passenger seat with his arm outside the window. Prosecutors have maintained that Richardson was in the car alone. 

After hearing arguments about the Thorpe interview and other evidence the defense team says it has uncovered, Hight told each side to draft a proposed order within 10 days for him to consider.

Stadiem argued that the defense team was trying to re-litigate a case that had been decided by a jury and upheld on appeal.

The judge was attentive as both sides made their cases, careful not to tip his hand. 

Hight asked the defense and prosecution to quickly get him proposed orders that he could mull. Although he said he would try to decide promptly, he gave no firm deadline for when that ruling might come down.

Defense Recap

Many of the Richardson supporters, who spent the morning and early afternoon at the courthouse during the nearly four-hour hearing, congregated at a recreation center afterward for a late lunch, a recap from the defense team, and a bit of strategizing.

“With what we presented today, no one should have confidence in the outcome of that trial,” Jake Sussman, a lead attorney for the defense team, told those gathered.

Hibah Elawad, Richardson’s fiancée, told The Assembly that Richardson has had many supporters in his corner from the start. Early on, though, people who weren’t familiar with Richardson wanted to hear how he was innocent, she said. Now, as more comes out about the new claims in court and a Free James Richardson website has been created, even more people have joined the effort.

Emancipate North Carolina, the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the N.C Justice Center, the North Carolina Second Chance Alliance, and other organizations have taken up his cause, too.

Richardson’s mother, Dorothy Richardson, thanked those who turned out to stand with her son. 

As a mother who gets up at 6 every morning for a family prayer, she wants others to know that the Richardsons are praying for James and others with wrongful conviction claims.

“We got to be for more than just ourselves,” she said. “Give and it shall be given to you. If you want help, you’ve got to help somebody else. Let the love go.”

Elawad said she was excited about the turnout. “People took off work, they got child care,” she said. “They know that this is how community works.”