Several wrongful convictions in NC

Prison is meant to punish the guilty, but during his 17-year imprisonment following false charges he molested his former stepson in Hot Springs, Jonathan “Scott” Pierpoint found himself in the company of innocent men.

One was Dwyane Dail, jailed in 1989 for the rape of a 12-year-old Goldsboro girl. Dail was freed in 2007 after DNA evidence showed his conviction based on microscopic hair analysis was wrong.

Another, Greg Taylor, was convicted for the 1991 murder of a Raleigh woman and freed after 17 years, in part, Taylor said, because it was learned a jailhouse informant had lied.

Pierpoint, who met the two men during his prison time, himself was exonerated on July 6 after his former stepson recanted his 1993 testimony, saying he had in fact not been raped by Pierpoint at the age of 7.

North Carolina has some of the best rules in the nation to prevent wrongful convictions, advocates for police and prosecutorial reform say. But they also say better protections should exist for men such as Pierpoint, Dail and Taylor.

“I want people to know that there is such a thing as wrongful convictions in the state of North Carolina,” said Pierpoint, 46, who was serving a life sentence. “And there needs to be something done.”

Common denominators

It's not possible to know how many wrongfully jailed people there are in North Carolina, reform advocates say. But it is known that over the last 20 years 22 inmates have been exonerated following efforts by advocacy groups such as the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence in Durham.

Case circumstances vary widely, but common denominators include reliance on eyewitness accounts, false confessions and tainted testimony, said center director Chris Mumma.

“Seventy-five percent of them have misidentification. Twenty-five percent have false confessions of some type,” Mumma said. “Then there's also instances of unreliable informants or ‘snitch' testimony.”

Others say the cases tend to involve people of little means, are often based on sex offense charges and reflect pressure on police to close cases.

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