A Charlotte (North Carolina) News & Observer investigative series about the death penalty found that prosecutorial misconduct led to a number of North Carolina capital convictions being overturned, and that more cases are currently under review due to questions of improper behavior by the state. The series noted that prosecutors who have withheld evidence often receive no significant punishment. Among the cases highlighted in the report were the following:

  • Alan Gell was sentenced to death in 1998. Four years later, a Superior Court judge ruled that the state Attorney General’s Office withheld witness statements indicating that Gell could not have committed the murder because he was in jail. They also failed to reveal a tape recording of the state’s star witness saying she had “to make up a story” to tell police.
  • Jerry Lee Hamilton was sentenced to death in 1997. He won a new trial in April 2003 because prosecutors and police withheld a document undermining the credibility of the state’s sole witness, Hamilton’s nephew, who had initially confessed to committing the murder alone.
  • Jonathan Hoffman’s lawyers have filed an appeal maintaining that prosecutors in Union County hid deals with the state’s star witness. The witness’s testimony resulted in a cut in his prison time by at least 15 years and put several thousand dollars into his pocket.
  • Charles Munsey won a new trial in 1999 after his attorneys discovered that the Wilkes County District Attorney withheld evidence that the state’s star witness, a jailhouse informant, was never in the prison where Munsey supposedly confessed to him. Munsey died in prison before he received a new trial.

These cases and others like them have led many North Carolinians, including former Superior Court Judge Tom Ross, who reversed Munsey’s conviction, to question the fairness of the state’s death penalty system. Ross notes, “From my perspective as a lawyer and judge, the adversarial system has gotten to the point where winning is more important than justice.” (News & Observer, November 2, 2003) See Innocence and Prosecutorial Misconduct.