Easley pardons man wrongly convicted of rape

Gov. Mike Easley issued a pardon of innocence this afternoon to Dwayne Allen Dail, who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit.

In 1989, a Wayne County jury convicted Dail, 38, of raping a 12-year-old girl two years before. He always swore his didn't do it and refused a plea deal which would have put him on probation for a misdemeanor offense.

Dail, 39, was freed in August after DNA extracted from a long-forgotten nightgown proved he was not the rapist.

The governor's pardon -- the fifth he's granted since taking office in 2001 -- clears the way for Dail to seek compensation for the years he paid for another man's crime. All told, Dail could collect $360,000 from the state.

"It's a pittance, to be frank, but I'm grateful to be a free man, so I won't whine," Dail said by phone from Florida Wednesday, minutes after his lawyer Chris Mumma called to share the news.

Mumma, director for the North Carolina Center for Actual Innocence, discovered the nightgown this summer after a evidence room clerk at the Goldsboro Police Department mentioned a retired officer might have saved some evidence from the case.