Pastor spent 8 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. NC finally admits mistake.
On a Saturday night in 1993, a convenience store clerk in the tiny town of Winterville called police to report a robbery, telling officers he’d handed $281 to a nervous young Black man in a hoodie.
Before sunrise, police arrested Darron Carmon, a 19-year-old pastor’s son and college student with a clean record. Officers found neither the stolen money nor the gun, but they charged Carmon with robbery based on the clerk’s word.
That single piece of evidence sent Carmon to prison for eight years, though he produced an alibi witness at trial.
His mother fainted in the courtroom.
He tried to kill himself behind bars.
But almost three decades later, long after he got out early for good behavior, long after he became pastor of two churches, long after he started a mentoring program, long after he got recognized by two North Carolina governors, long after Winterville declared Darron Carmon Day at the end of every April, the state has finally admitted its mistake and vacated his conviction.
Just last year, court records show, his lawyers discovered a set of finger and palm prints in a Winterville Police file, which were never released to Carmon’s attorneys. Those prints do not match Carmon’s, meaning he was sentenced in spite of evidence that might have cleared him.
“Most of all, I’m thankful,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s the one thing I asked God to do for me. Do I feel justice? I actually don’t. ... They can’t give me the time that they took.”
‘He’s practically an expert’
Winterville, with a population just over 10,000, sits just south of Greenville in Pitt County. Carmon’s attorney in Durham, Abraham Rubert-Schewel, said he has already notified the town of a potential claim.
Police Chief Ryan Willhite referred questions to the town’s attorney, Keen Lassiter, who said Thursday that none of the officers involved in 1993 are still employed by the town. Winterville just learned about the fingerprint evidence because it wasn’t involved in any of the court hearings, he said, and he wasn’t yet able to comment further.
“We’re talking about almost 30 years ago,” he said. “We want to make sure we have all our information.”
Carmon describes growing up in a time when police routinely followed and watched Black men, believing all to be potential criminals. He came from a family of pastors, and he was studying commercial arts at Pitt Community College.
But that wouldn’t have mattered, he said, to officers investigating a robbery.
“To be honest, to be a Black male at that time, that really, really played a big part,” he said. “All you have to say is, ‘They have Timbalands and a hoodie on.’ “
Carmon said he went to trial in 1993 confident he’d return home that day, being innocent of the crime and not knowing anything about it.
But his attorney at the time admitted being unprepared for trial, according to court records, and gambled that Carmon’s case wouldn’t come up that week because it was the most recent of three he was juggling. The judge denied his motion to continue the case.
More importantly, though, clerk Robert Thompson testified that he worked as a security consultant for Fresh Way convenience stores and was also a certified trainer for local fast food chains. He was, he testified, an expert in robbery security and suspect identification, earning more than $1,000 a day.
“This cost me a bunch of money to be tied up in this case, OK,” he said from the witness stand, according to court records. “I have nothing at stake.”
Carmon’s lawyer called only one of three alibi witnesses, court records said, and he failed to ask Thompson what his lawyers now consider crucial questions, including:
Was anybody at the gas pumps at the time of the robbery? Why did you testify the robber held the gun with his right hand when you also testified he took the money with his right hand? What kind of training did you receive, and when?
Then, in his closing argument to jurors, Carmon’s lawyer said, “They couldn’t ask for any better witness than Mr. Thompson. He’s practically an expert in identifying people.”
Not long after he arrived in prison, Carmon began collecting pills from other inmates, keeping them in a cup. When he had enough, he swallowed them all, expecting to die.
But he didn’t.
“I just felt this peace over my body, and I knew it was God,” he said. “God became my fortune. I served him for real. That’s the only way I made it.”
Clerk’s testimony in ‘grave doubt’
Carmon served his eight years without a single behavior infraction. He became assistant chaplain and led inmate church services every day.
But when he got out, he felt anxiety just sitting in somebody’s car rather than behind four walls. He spent much of his time alone in his room, unaccustomed to freedom.
As time passed, he joined his parents in ministry, becoming pastor at Rebuild Christian Center Church in Winterville and Greater Village Gate Church in Lewiston. He adopted five children and started a pair of nonprofits, Sikono Mentoring and People Against Racism.
“He literally rewrote my narrative,” said Darius Crumb, a mentoring graduate, according to WITN news. “I’m supposed to be on drugs. I’m supposed to be on the streets. I’m supposed to be a statistic, but because of this man, I’m not. I’m living proof that this program does work.”
Then in 2020, Rubert-Schewel and a collection of post-conviction attorneys began to investigate his case, interviewing old witnesses.
Most importantly, court records show, they spoke with the former CEO of Fresh Way stores, who could not recall his company ever hiring a security expert or providing any training in robbery prevention or suspect identification.
The CEO also told attorneys, according to court filings, that cashiers were required to place cash greater than $100 in a drop box, and that it was common at the time of the robbery for clerks to report fake robberies and take the money themselves.
Robert Thompson, they learned through public records requests, worked at Lenoir Community College in addition to his cashier’s job. He earned $16 an hour.
All of this places his word in “grave doubt,” his attorneys argued.
Thompson has since died. Asked what he would say to him, Carmon paused.
“I don’t believe you can forgive people for things they didn’t ask forgiveness for,” he said. “I do believe you can’t have hate in your heart.”
‘I still wear hoodies’
Carmon’s conviction was overturned with the consent of Farris Dixon, who is Pitt County’s district attorney.
The district attorney at the time of Carmon’s trial, Clark Everett, has since retired. He told Carmon’s attorneys that had he possessed any fingerprint evidence, he would have given it to the defense.
Neither returned the N&O’s calls.
Meanwhile, Carmon said he trains young Black men on how to interact with police officers, not to act hostile, paranoid or jumpy. But the more he talks about systemic racism, he said, the more he has to be careful not to paint too negative a picture.
He knows how the justice system continues to view people who look like him. But, he said, if he places that idea too firmly in a young Black man’s head, it could get him shot.
“I want to curb things that might happen to them,” he said, adding, “I still wear hoodies now.”
Pastor Darron Carmon will hold a public media conference at the Pitt County Courthouse in Greenville at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
This story was originally published September 15, 2022 at 11:58 AM.