Innocent Charlotte man spent 12 years in prison

A Charlotte man wrongfully convicted of kidnapping and armed robbery is finally home after spending 12 years behind bars.

Shawn Massey, 37, was the victim of erroneous eyewitness identification, say Duke Law School researchers, whose Wrongful Convictions Clinic and Innocence Project spent more than four years examining the case.

Massey was released from a state prison May 6, after Mecklenburg District Attorney Peter Gilchrist decided his office had botched the case.

"We messed up by failing to disclose to the defense that the victim at one point expressed doubt about her identification of the defendant," said Gilchrist, who obtained a court order vacating Massey's conviction.

Massey went to prison for the 1998 crimes against a Charlotte woman and her two young children. He had two years left to serve on his 14-year sentence.

"I thank God for being free," Massey said through a lawyer Thursday. "I'm thankful to the Duke Innocence Project for helping to free me. And I thank God for my grandmother and family believing in me."

Massey is among 19 people in North Carolina whose sentences have been vacated during the past 15 years due to wrongful convictions, according to the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence in Durham. Twelve of them had been erroneously identified by eyewitnesses and were later cleared by DNA or other evidence.

The Wrongful Convictions Clinic raised questions about the identification of Massey.

In reviewing a series of suspect photos, the victim noted Massey's resemblance to her attacker but told police he lacked her assailant's cornrow braids, clinic researchers found. She made the same observation when she first saw Massey in person before the start of his trial, and also observed that he weighed less than her attacker.

Those observations, uncovered years later by Duke Law students investigating the case, were not passed on to Massey's trial lawyer.

Gilchrist said his office should have told Massey's lawyer about doubts the victim expressed.

Before a court hearing, Gilchrist said, the victim had approached the prosecutor in the courtroom and mentioned her doubts. But the prosecutor told her he didn't have time to talk at that moment and asked her to have a seat. After the hearing, the victim told the prosecutor she had seen and heard the suspect in court and no longer had any doubt.

Gilchrist did not identify the prosecutor involved, but he said he doesn't think the prosecutor intentionally withheld the information from the defense. It was a case of bad judgment, Gilchrist said.

On May 6, Duke's Wrongful Convictions co-directors James Coleman and Theresa Newman picked up Massey at the state prison in Maury, near Greenville, and drove him to Charlotte to be reunited with family.

"The public has the view that wrongful convictions are proven by DNA evidence because those cases get the most publicity, but those represent a relatively small percentage of wrongful convictions," said Coleman, who is also a Duke Law School professor. "Cases like Shawn's, where the perpetrator has not left biological evidence, are far more common."