The consequences of my mistakes aren't usually a big deal. Earlier this year I wrote that Haiti was 90 miles off the Florida coast. A slew of readers rightly chastised me in e-mails similar to this one: "Dear idiot, Cuba is 90 miles from the U.S. coast, Haiti is 700 miles away. Go buy a map!" I did.
Other mistakes aren't as easy to fix or face. The toughest came a few months ago when Greg Taylor walked into a recording studio for an interview.
In 2006, I had opposed the creation of the Innocence Inquiry Commission (IIC) by the General Assembly. Had the legislature adopted the view I espoused, Taylor would be enduring his 17th year in Central Prison for a murder he did not commit.
After some pleasantries, I told Taylor about my columns. He knew all about them. He had read them in prison. Sensing my awkwardness, he placed his arm on my shoulder, grinned, and said, "That's all right man, nobody's perfect."
No one knows that better than Taylor. I wish I'd known better back in 2006.
The imperfection of the criminal justice system is why I oppose the death penalty. State-sponsored execution can't afford even one mistake. But I was more than willing to accept imperfect justice when it came to people serving time.
If the criminal justice system was as flawed as innocence commission proponents argued in 2006, I countered, North Carolina should fix it, not add another layer of judicial bureaucracy. I feared establishing the IIC would give prisoner-rights do-gooders another opportunity to clog an already overburdened system.
However, since 2006 I've learned just how deficient North Carolina's criminal justice system can be. The Duke lacrosse case brought it home.
Lest we forget, three Duke players were indicted on rape charges that, had they been convicted, could have earned them up to 15 years in prison. The one abuse that shocked me the most was that then-Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong got indictments of David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann without the grand jury hearing from accuser Crystal Gail Mangum or anyone with direct knowledge of the alleged crime.
Thankfully, the Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann families had the financial resources to fight Nifong with some of the best defense lawyers in our state. That fact didn't go unnoticed by Seligmann, who said, following the dismissal of all charges and a pointed declaration of innocence by Attorney General Roy Cooper, "If police officers and a district attorney can systematically railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can't imagine what they would do to people who do not have the resources to defend themselves."
One doesn't have to imagine. Taylor is evidence. Dwayne Allen Dail, Darryl Hunt, Leo Waters and, most recently, Shawn Massey, are men with meager resources who spent at least a decade in North Carolina prisons for crimes they did not commit.
To win their deserved freedom, these men had to establish their innocence to the handful of law school-run projects that investigate cases in which people may have been wrongly convicted. Then they had to rely on luck, such as a cooperative prosecutor in Massey's case or the discovery of DNA material once thought destroyed in Dail's case. For Taylor, it was the discovery of notes that contradicted lab-report evidence that blood was found in his vehicle, which was at the murder scene.
The innocent should not have to rely on luck. And they shouldn't have to wait for the justice due them. But they are.
Former state Supreme Court Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr. and Christine Mumma, head of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, are among those who want the IIC to get out of the screening business and concentrate on just 10 to 15 cases a year. They want more experienced law school projects to determine which cases deserve IIC resources.
The General Assembly should adopt this recommendation. As any law student - and Greg Taylor - can attest, justice delayed is justice denied.
