Innocence panel orders first review

Judges will look at cop's conviction

RALEIGH -- An innocence commission created by the state of North Carolina recommended its first case for review Monday when it sent the conviction of a former police officer back to Pitt County for a hearing.

The case of Henry Reeves, 41, convicted in 2001 of taking indecent liberties with a child, was approved last week by the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, Executive Director Kendra Montgomery-Blinn said.

Montgomery-Blinn said a three-judge panel will be appointed to hear the case and make a decision on innocence.

More than 200 cases have been sent to the commission, she said.

"It's the first case the commission has heard at all," Montgomery-Blinn said. "I feel like we've made legal history."

A statement released by the commission said Reeves was convicted in 2001 after a second trial. The trial first ended in a hung jury. Reeves served two years in prison, the statement said.

"This is the type of case that the commission was created for," Montgomery-Blinn said. "It involved a detailed and lengthy investigation that could only have been completed with the subpoena power granted to the commission."

Most evidence that was considered by the commission was from witnesses who didn't testify at Reeves' trial but who came forward later.

The state commission began operations in January.

Superior Judge Quentin T. Sumner, the commission's chairman, said the action was a first for a state agency.

"This is the first time that a hearing of this type has ever been conducted in the United States," he said of the commission's vote.

A nonprofit innocence group, the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, earlier this year helped free Dwayne Allen Dail, 39, who served 18 years in prison for a child rape he didn't commit. DNA evidence showed he wasn't guilty.