Henry Lee Hunt Faces Execution as State Ignores Innocence Claim, Prosecutorial Misconduct
Henry Lee Hunt Faces Execution as State Ignores Innocence Claim, Prosecutorial Misconduct
Raleigh, NC, September 8, 2003
Four days from his execution, Henry Lee Hunt still seeks a meaningful hearing on his claim of innocence as well as the prosecutorial misconduct that has marred his case from the outset. Hunt was convicted of two 1984 murders in Robeson County, but in the ensuing years the lawyers who replaced his court-appointed trial counsel have systematically debunked the evidence that led to the convictions. “The State has never substantively responded to the strong evidence of Henry’s innocence, nor have police or prosecutors ever justified their admitted destruction and withholding of crucial evidence,” says attorney Stuart Meiklejohn. “Instead, they make vague statements that the case against Henry was ‘overwhelming’ and that he was the most dangerous man in Robeson County, neither of which has anything to do with the new evidence or stands up under scrutiny.”
For example, no explanation has ever been offered for why another man, A.R. Barnes, was not charged with the first murder despite initially failing a lie detector test and confessing; his statement included details of the crime not reported in the press and matched the physical evidence in ways that would have been impossible to know unless he’d been at the scene. Barnes then recanted and accused Hunt; he later served less than 8 years on lesser charges. Hunt, in contrast, has stedfastly maintained his innocence and conclusively passed two polygraph tests. The tests were administered by respected polygraph expert Stan Fulmer, who has worked extensively with police and prosecutors. “Throughout my life I have been a proponent of the death penalty and have been very pro-law enforcement,” says Fulmer, whose faith in the system has been shaken by his work on the Hunt case. “I have had to rethink my thoughts on the death penalty…. Mr. Hunt is innocent. Mr. Hunt did not commit these murders.”
The fact that prosecutors withheld key evidence at trial has not yet been adequately addressed. For example, they told the jury that Hunt killed the second victim, Larry Jones, to prevent him from telling police about Hunt’s role in the first murder. Yet notes provided to Hunt’s lawyers for the first time 10 years after the trial show that in interviews with the police before his death, Jones had not blamed Hunt or even mentioned his name. Rather, it was another man (also one of the state’s key witnesses), not Hunt, on whom Jones was informing. This information would have eliminated Hunt’s motive for the Jones killing and seriously damaged the state’s theory.
This would not be the first time that prosecutors in Robeson County bent the rules to secure a guilty verdict. John Oliver won a new sentencing hearing because notorious Robeson County District Attorney Joe Freeman Britt (who also prosecuted Hunt) had withheld exculpatory information from the defense. While an assistant prosecutor in Columbus County, current D.A. Johnson Britt withheld witness statements and other evidence in the case of Curtis Womble that resulted in his sentence being vacated. The late Judge Dexter Brooks noted this history and singled out the Womble case in a 1999 memo on court rules. “Robeson County prosecutors appear to have a history of discovery violations,” Brooks wrote. “The public image of the criminal justice system is suffering.”
Nor is Robeson County the only place where such violations have resulted in overturned verdicts. Alan Gell recently won a new trial partly because prosecutors in the Attorney General’s office withheld numerous witness statements at trial that contradicted the state’s version of the facts. “It is supremely ironic that the very people who are responsible for arguing that the evidence against Henry is ‘overwhelming’ have themselves been cited for withholding evidence favorable to capital defendants,” says attorney Steve Holley. “Had the jury in 1985 known what we now know, it is highly unlikely that Henry would have been convicted at all, much less sentenced to death.”
Moreover, case files containing interview notes and other information that might have helped Henry were destroyed by the Lumberton Police Department and the State Bureau of investigation. Mike Stogner of the LPD testified in a post-conviction hearing that his notes and other materials relating to this case were destroyed after he told his superiors that Hunt’s new lawyers had asked to review the materials. The destruction of those materials is all the more remarkable because Stogner claimed that he and his superior officer at the LPD were “meticulous” about preserving investigative files in capital cases because of the “seriousness” of the matter. “Gov. Easley granted clemency in the case of Charlie Alston because a law enforcement agency had lost a DNA sample that might have been tested,” says Meiklejohn. “The willful destruction of evidence in Henry’s case is a far more egregious circumstance.”
Attorneys for Hunt have uncovered considerable evidence that casts serious doubt on the case presented by the State at trial. Witnesses changed their statements over time to make them consistent; a crime-scene expert has demonstrated that testimony by an alleged eyewitness to one of the murders was patently false; A.R. Barnes’ brother Elwell wrote an affidavit absolving Hunt and blaming himself and A.R.; alleged physical evidence presented at trial, including a shovel Hunt supposedly used to bury one of the victims, had no forensic connection to the murders. The State has addressed none of this, instead insisting that the case against Hunt is airtight based on judicial opinions, which were in turn based on the woefully incomplete factual record from the original trial.
If Hunt does not receive relief in the courts, Gov. Easley must avoid further erosion of public confidence in North Carolina’s system of capital punishment by granting clemency. Backers of a moratorium bill, including many who support the death penalty in principle, had just such cases in mind when the bill came within several votes of passage this summer. Justice demands at the very least a resolution of these troubling issues.
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