Man wrongly convicted 4 decades ago freed from prison
WHITEVILLE, N.C. (AP) – For the third time in less than six months, a North Carolina inmate was exonerated by DNA evidence and freed after spending decades in prison for a wrongful murder conviction.
This time, 70-year-old Joseph Sledge was set free on Friday after a three-judge panel found that he was innocent of killing a mother and daughter in 1976. The hearing was called after an investigation by the state’s one-of-a kind investigative panel on innocence.
As three judges listened to closing arguments, Sledge wrote down a few words on a Post-it note: “closure,” ”please” and “exonerated.”
A few hours later, carrying his belonging in plastic bags, Sledge emerged from a North Carolina jail, saying he was looking forward to what most people consider the most mundane of things: “Going home. Relaxing. Sleeping in a real bed. Probably get in a pool of water and swim for a little while.”
The lawyer who took his case in 2004, Christine Mumma, said she had been on the verge of closing the case in 2012 when court clerks discovered a misplaced envelope containing hair from the crime scene while cleaning out an evidence vault.
The envelope contained hair, found on the victim and believed to be the attacker’s, that turned out to be a key piece of evidence needed to do DNA testing, which wasn’t available when Sledge went on trial in 1978.
“I understand those shelves were very high, but there was a ladder in that room,” said Mumma, a lawyer for the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence.
In 2013, the case was referred to the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, the only state-run investigative agency of its kind. So far, Sledge is the eighth person exonerated after an investigation by the commission, which started operating in 2007. It has reviewed and closed about 1,500 cases.
Nationwide, The Innocence Project said there have been 325 post-conviction DNA exonerations.
The North Carolina commission found there was enough evidence of Sledge’s innocence to refer it to a panel of three judges, who were appointed by the state Supreme Court.
The judges considered the commission’s investigative file, and a DNA expert highlighted lab tests in her testimony Friday. Meghan Clement of Cellmark Forensics said none of the evidence collected from the scene – hair, DNA and fingerprints – belonged to Sledge.
The key jailhouse informant, Herman Baker, signed an affidavit in 2013 recanting trial testimony. Baker said he lied at the 1978 trial after being promised leniency in his own drug case and he said he’d been coached by authorities on what to say.
Testimony from another jailhouse informant was inconsistent, according to the commission documents. That informant died in 1991.
The victims, 74-year-old Josephine Davis and her 57-year-old daughter, Aileen, were stabbed to death in September 1976. Aileen was also sexually assaulted.
They were found in their home in Elizabethtown, a day after Sledge had escaped from a prison work farm where he was serving a four-year sentence for larceny.
Sledge was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Katherine Brown, the granddaughter and niece of the victims, said Friday during the hearing that the women were humble and considerate people who looked after other family members.
During her statement, Brown said the family was “shocked that it will become an unsolved mystery” after years of believing they had some closure. She didn’t directly address Sledge’s innocence in her statement.
After his release, Sledge was headed to Savannah, Georgia, to live with family. He told reporters he never doubted he’d be freed someday despite spending more than half his life in prison.
“I had confidence in my own self. The self will and the patience,” he said before trailing off and searching for the right word. “Patience is the word.”