RALEIGH -- Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby complained Friday that he is not ready to appear before a three-judge panel to argue against the release of a man his office sent to prison in 1993.
Willoughby asked for a delay in the hearing over whether Gregory Taylor should be set free. The hearing was ordered after an independent commission determined last fall that there was evidence that Taylor didn't commit the murder that sent him to prison.
But Howard Manning, the Wake County Superior Court judge who heads the three-judge panel, wouldn't budge Friday. He ordered Willoughby and Taylor's team of lawyers to be ready for the hearing on Feb. 9.
"We're not going to cramp this," Manning said. "We're not going to put it in a box. It's going to take whatever it takes."
Willoughby said he doesn't know which witnesses Taylor's team will call, and therefore doesn't know which witnesses he should have ready. He said he is not eager to retry the case, but instead wants to limit the coming hearing to information already presented to judges on numerous appeals since 1993.
"We're at a disadvantage," Willoughby said. "We don't know much of anything."
Taylor was convicted in 1993 of killing Jacquetta Thomas, a prostitute who lived in Southeast Raleigh. Taylor and a friend went to her neighborhood one night to buy drugs. Taylor's truck got stuck in the mud near where police found Thomas' body, and police immediately targeted Taylor as her killer.
Taylor has maintained his innocence from the start. The testimony of a jailhouse snitch and another prostitute led to Taylor's conviction; since then, the testimony of both witnesses has been discredited.
Taylor is walking into uncharted territory. If Taylor prevails in February, he would be the first North Carolinian to be declared innocent through a process established in 2006 to examine claims of innocence. Only one other man has made it as far as Taylor, winning a hearing before a three-judge panel.
Willoughby is uneasy about this new process.
"This is not supposed to be 'if we tried the case 20 years later, would we get a different result?'" Willoughby said after a preliminary hearing Friday. Manning refused to limit the scope of Taylor's hearing in February.
The N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission investigated Taylor's case over the last several years. At a hearing in September, the commission, made up of judges, lawyers, police and victims' advocates, found there was enough evidence of innocence to refer the case to three judges for further review.
Willoughby was a member of The Actual Innocence Commission, headed by former Supreme Court Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr. The commission asked the legislature to pass a law creating the Innocence Inquiry Commission. Willoughby voted against that recommendation.
In a letter filed by Taylor's lawyers this week, Lake raised Willoughby's skepticism about the innocence commission.
"It is clear to me, based on the District Attorney's statements during the truth-seeking investigation and review of Greg Taylor's claim of innocence, that the District Attorney is still opposed to the process," Lake said in a letter filed in the case.
Willoughby said he had objected to the legislation because it didn't guarantee that victims' families could take part in the process.
