An all-white jury convicted Ronnie Wallace Long of raping a prominent white woman in 1976, triggering protests in Concord, North Carolina.
Long was 20 years old at the time. His lawyers accused investigators of lying about the evidence and on Thursday, the state pardoned Long and four other men in North Carolina convicted of crimes they did not commit.
Long served 44 years after being sentenced to two life sentences for rape and burglary. He was freed in August 2020 at age 64. His release was ordered after North Carolina filed a motion in federal court, where a judge found that evidence from the crime scene did not match Long and was deliberately withheld by law enforcement, CNN reported.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper granted pardons on Thursday to Long and four other men who served time for crimes they didn’t commit: Teddy Lamont Isbell Sr., Damian Miguel Mills, Kenneth Manzi Kagonyera and Larry Jerome Williams Jr. The pardons makes them eligible to file a claim under a state law that allows compensation for people wrongly convicted of felonies. The men pleaded guilty to charges including robbery and second-degree murder but were later found to be innocent.
In a CBS News interview, Long told journalist Erin Moriarty that he never stood a chance of a fair trial in the segregated south.
“You got a young Black man in 1976 in front of a white jury … for a sexual assault of a rich, wealthy, White female. I mean, what kind of justice is that?” Long said.
Long’s older sister, Lynda Smith, was there when the verdict was read. Concord erupted, she said. “Oh my God. It was a terrible sight. They went crazy,” Smith said, according to CBS News. “They was breaking windows. They was turning over police cars. They was running out through the street.”
Thirty years into Long’s incarceration, his attorneys found out that investigators had more evidence but had hidden the results.
“Not only did they hide evidence, but then they took the stand while under oath and lied about the evidence,” said Jamie Lau, a supervising attorney with the Duke Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic. A detective in Long’s case was later charged and sentenced to prison for stealing checks.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
For example, the defense did not know about 43 fingerprints found at the crime scene that didn’t match Long, hair at the crime scene that did not match Long and a rape kit with evidence taken from the victim.
When she heard about new evidence in Long’s case, Smith said, “My reaction was ‘Oh, my brother’s coming home now. But they still ain’t let him out.”
Long’s only child, Carlos Spears, was 3 when his father was falsely imprisoned. He’s 47 now.
Various studies estimate that between 2.3 percent and 5 percent of all U.S. prisoners are innocent, The innocence Project reported in 2014. A study of Virginia convictions in the 1970s and 1980s matched to later DNA analysis estimated a rate of wrongful conviction of 11.6 percent in such cases, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report. Wayne State University Prof. Marvin Zalman estimated in a 2012 study that up to 10,000 people may be wrongfully convicted of serious crimes each year. A 2014 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 4.1 percent of death-row inmates are innocent and that at least 340 innocent people may have been executed since 1973.
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