A
man who spent nearly four decades behind bars was freed from prison Friday
after a three-judge panel found him innocent in the 1976 stabbing deaths of a
Bladen County mother and her adult daughter.
Last month, the North
Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission recommended
the case of Joseph Sledge for judicial review after newly discovered evidence cast
doubt on whether he had anything to do with the killings of Josephine Davis,
74, and Ailene Davis, 53, in their Elizabethtown home.
About an hour
after the judges' ruling – and after 37 years in prison – Sledge, 70, walked
out of the Columbus County jail in Whiteville into the arms of family.
"I just
thank God to be alive and thank the (North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence)
and the Innocence Commission for sticking by this case and making it really
happen," Sledge said.
His next stop:
Supper with his family and his attorney 23 miles away at Dale's Seafood in Lake
Waccamaw. He ordered oyster stew and looked at family photos on an iPhone while
he waited for his meal.
On Saturday,
he'll return with his family home to Savannah, Ga.
"There's no
question in my mind that part of justice was served today with his
release," said Christine Mumma, Sledge's attorney and executive director
of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence.
"It's a tragedy for him to be released after 37 years, at 70-years-old."
District Attorney
Jon David, who was not the original prosecutor in the case, told the judges
Friday that he believed in Sledge's innocence and credited the work of the
Innocence Commission for unearthing an "injustice" in the conviction.
David also
apologized to Sledge.
"There's
nothing worse for a prosecutor than convicting an innocent person," he
said. "The 'sorry' is imperfect to convey the magnitude of what happened
with respect to this man's life."
David pledged to
reopen the investigation into the Davis slayings, but the victims' family,
unconvinced of Sledge's innocence, expressed disappointment that he would go
free.
"We, the
family, are heartbroken by this decision," Josephine Davis' granddaughter,
Katherine Brown, read from a prepared statement. "District Attorney Jon
David states that he will be reopening this case, and we, the remaining family
members, are shocked by this change."
Sledge then took
the stand.
"I'm very,
very sorry for your loss," he said. "I hope you get closure in this
matter."
At the time of
the crimes, a 32-year-old Sledge had been serving a four-year sentence at a
prison work farm for larceny when he escaped a day before the slayings. That
factored into his conviction, as well as key testimony
from two fellow prisoners who said Sledge admitted to the killing the victims when he encountered them while looking
for a place to hide after his escape.
One of the
inmates recanted his testimony and told the Innocence Commission that he lied
in exchange for leniency for a drug violation. The other inmate died in 1991.
Recent DNA
testing on hairs found at the crime scene also shows that they could not have
been Sledge's, an expert testified Friday. Testing in the 1970s could only
determine that they were from a black male.
In 2003, a judge
ordered the hair samples turned over for DNA testing, but it took years of
searching before they
were found in an envelope on a top shelf in an evidence room in Bladen County.
Sledge is the
eighth person exonerated because of the North Carolina Innocence Commission,
the only state-run investigative agency of its kind.
The General
Assembly created the panel in 2006 to look at post-convictions claims in cases
where new evidence supports a defendant's claims that he or she is innocent of
a crime.
Since 2007, the
commission has reviewed nearly 1500 claims of innocence.
The nonprofit
Innocence Project says there have been 325 post-conviction DNA exonerations in
U.S. history.
culled
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