Ghost of the Innocent Man

by Benjamin Rachlin

By North Carolina statute, a portion of Willie’s legal file became public record in April 2012, when the IIC voted his case forward to a three-judge panel. A further portion joined it at that panel the following October. Much of this archive may be found on the IIC’s website, under State v. Grimes, at www.innocencecommission-nc.gov/grimes.html.

  In addition, Willie waived attorney-client privilege on my behalf, and volunteered many of the documents he’d accumulated over the twenty-four years of his case. (Including, for example, his records from inside the Department of Correction.) Soon I met more attorneys and staffers at agencies that Willie had contacted, and they shared records of their own. The most important of these unpublished documents I have listed below.

  Because of the braided structure of the book, it makes little sense to distinguish notes for each chapter individually, as though every one were reported separately from its neighbors. Their distinction in the narrative is only a stylistic choice. As the content of certain chapters overlaps, so did their reporting. Instead I have grouped notes more logically, according to their subject matter.

  Documents that are published—and thus available more widely—I have listed separately, and alphabetically, in my sources.

  PROLOGUE AND CHAPTER 1

  Interviews: Stephen G. Fischer, at the FBI; Willie Grimes; Samuel Gross, at the National Registry of Exonerations; Betty Shuford Hairston; Teresa Hamlett; Chris Mumma; and Kendra Montgomery-Blinn.

  Unpublished documents: For details of Carrie Elliott’s assault and its investigation by the Hickory Police Department, I relied on the emergency department record and patient progress notes for Carrie Elliott from Catawba Memorial Hospital, dated October 24, 1987. I also relied on the case file from the Hickory Police Department, including evidence-control forms, incident and supplemental investigation reports, requests for examination of physical evidence, photographs of the crime scene, booking photographs, informal officer notes, and the arrest warrant for Willie Grimes, variously dated October 24 through 28, 1987. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation maintained an additional file, including a rape evidence kit and two SBI laboratory reports dated November 25, 1987, and June 28, 1988, respectively. Steve Hunt kept his own personal file on the case even in retirement, and I relied on that, too.

  For details of pretrial maneuvering by Ed de Torres and the Catawba County DA, I relied on correspondence between Ed de Torres, William Johnson, and John C. Hennigar, dated spring and summer 1988. The attorney file of Ed de Torres also included personal notes and memos, pretrial motions from April 1988, and the affidavits filed in Catawba County Superior Court for William “Les” Robinson, Betty and Carolyn Shuford, Brenda Smith, Rachel Wilson, and Richard Wilson in February and March 1988.

  Details about that first national report on wrongful convictions in the United States, and the cases it included, are drawn from the National Registry of Exonerations. The registry is listed in my sources, but it is also available online at www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx.

  For Willie’s initial trial, in July 1988, of course I relied on the transcript of the proceeding. Further details, including what Willie and Ed de Torres were personally thinking at various moments, come from each man’s testimony years later at the IIC hearing and three-judge panel. Transcripts from all three of those proceedings may be found through the Catawba County courts.

  Three of the witnesses called during Willie’s trial (the ER doctor, the evidence technician, and Willie himself) I present in the narrative slightly out of the actual sequence they were called to testify. I’ve done this only for clarity, so that readers can follow the events described at trial chronologically, without the confusing out-of-order sequence in which lawyers presented their arguments.

  CHAPTERS 2–18 (EVEN)

  These chapters follow Chris Mumma, Beverly Lake, and the Actual Innocence Commission from July 1988 to August 2005.

  Interviews: Jim Coleman; Kim Cook, at UNC Wilmington; Ben David; Gretchen Engel, at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation; Mike Gauldin; I. Beverly Lake Jr.; Kendra Montgomery-Blinn; Chris Mumma; Theresa Newman; Pat Norris; Bob Orr; Donna Pygott; Russell Rawlings, at the North Carolina Bar Association; Rich Rosen; Tom Ross; Don Stephens; Jennifer Thompson; and Pete Weitzel.

  Unpublished documents: In 1998, while a law student at UNC Chapel Hill, Chris Mumma wrote an assignment on her juror experience in the James McDowell case, “Change in Perspective: A Juror’s View Ten Years After a Capital Punishment Verdict.” I relied on this unpublished paper as well as court records from the case.

  For details of the meetings of the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission, the study group created by Beverly Lake, I relied on the private notes and correspondence of Lake as well as the private notes, drafts, receipts, and correspondence of Chris Mumma. The AIC also recorded its own legislative drafts, working papers, meeting agendas and minutes, and survey and poll results. Rich Rosen’s welcoming monologue at their first meeting at Chris Mumma’s house, on November 22, 2002, is drawn from his prepared remarks for the occasion.

  For more details on the career and perspective of Tom Ross, I relied on his remarks upon receiving the William H. Rehnquist Award in Washington, DC, on November 13, 2000, and on his later remarks to the North Carolina Supreme Court Historical Society on October 10, 2013.

  The memorandum by the Winston-Salem Police Department in reply to the AIC’s recommendations concerning eyewitness identification was titled “Response to Eyewitness Identification Procedure Recommendations by the North Carolina Actual Innocence Commission” and dated January 30, 2004.

  CHAPTERS 3–29 (ODD)

  These chapters follow Willie’s experience in prison from July 1988, when he was convicted, to September 2010, when the IIC accepted his case.

  Interviews: Herbert Berg, at UNC Wilmington; Sylvester Branch, at Watchtower magazine; Sabrina Butler; Kim Cook; Dwayne Dail; Mary Duquette, at the Hickory school board; Dr. Amy Feldman, at Allergy Partners of Coastal Carolina, to rule out environmental causes for Willie’s poor health; J. Phillip Griffin Jr., now retired from Prisoner Legal Services; Willie Grimes; Thomas Hill; Peggy Mainness, at Patrick Beaver Memorial Library; Eddie Moose; Chris Mumma; Gladys Perkins; Louie Ross; Bryan Stewart; Anne Stalnaker, at Hickory High School; Greg Taylor; and Afton Turner.

  Unpublished documents: For details of Willie’s time in prison, I relied on his file at the North Carolina Department of Correction, including medical and mental-health records; cell and case manager assignments; case management notes; administrative segregation and offense and disciplinary reports; infraction, classification, and transfer and external movement records; job activity, programs activity, arrest, and visitation histories; temporary leave forms; judgment and commitment orders; employment/work skill/military detail; and general control information. The NC Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission kept an additional file on Willie, including correspondence. I also found useful an online forum called Prison Talk, where the families and friends of inmates can share tips and impressions of various facilities, including, for example, a prison’s visitation and mail policies. The forum specifically called North Carolina Prison Profiles is available at www.prisontalk.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=346.

  For the chronology of Willie’s failed appeals, and more letters he wrote from prison, I relied on Ed de Torres’s attorney file on Willie, including private notes, correspondence, and billable hours, as well as Willie’s file at North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, including his application, statements, and correspondence with J. Phillip Griffin, Marvin Sparrow, and Charles E. Jones. The North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, once Willie applied there in 2003, kept its own file on him, including correspondence, application questionnaires, and internal memos. So did the IIC, once Willie applied there in 2010, including transcripts of interviews that Jamie Lau and Sharon Stellato conducted with Willie over the course of their investigation. Noell Tin’s attorney file on Willie Grimes, though only a page or two, si
nce Tin intersected with Willie’s case only briefly, through Eddie Moose, was also helpful. So was the private correspondence of Willie Grimes, Gladys Perkins, and Louie Ross, including with attorneys Ed de Torres and Walter T. Johnson.

  For histories of the towns of Lawndale and Hickory, the indispensable Peggy Mainness, at Patrick Beaver Memorial Library, led me through archives of newspaper clippings, regional tourism pamphlets, and yearbooks from Ridgeview High, home of the Untouchables. Ann Stalnaker, who later became the principal of Hickory High School, wrote her 2013 doctoral dissertation, at UNC Greensboro, on the history of desegregation in the school and region, and she graciously shared it with me. It is called “Desegregating Hickory High School, 1955–1975.”

  For the beliefs and practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses, in addition to my interviews with several Witnesses, elders, and a religion scholar at UNCW, I relied on publications from the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, including the magazines Watchtower and Awake! and its preferred New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. These resources and others are available in print and also on jw.org.

  Central Prison has been renovated since Willie arrived there in 1988. Neither K nor O dorm exists today. Wherever possible I relied on historical photographs and interviews with inmates who were incarcerated there from the time in question; however, I also relied generally on what the prison looks like today.

  CHAPTERS 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, AND 30

  These chapters follow Chris Mumma and the Center on Actual Innocence from June 2003 to September 2010, as it worked on Willie’s case, as well as the earliest cases of the IIC during this same period.

  Interviews: Dwayne Dail; Ben David; Willie Grimes; I. Beverly Lake Jr.; Kendra Montgomery-Blinn; Chris Mumma; Cheryl Sullivan, at the Center on Actual Innocence; Greg Taylor; and Pete Weitzel.

  Unpublished documents: Details on the earliest cases to proceed to IIC hearings—State v. Reeves, State v. McNeil, and State v. Taylor—may be found on the IIC’s website, www.innocencecommission-nc.gov. By legislative design, those cases that proceeded further along in the IIC process offer progressively more in the public record. Greg Taylor, as the first person in U.S. history exonerated this way, has been covered most widely, and a range of published documents about him and his case appear in my sources.

  For details about its own work on Willie’s case, I relied on the Center on Actual Innocence file on Willie Grimes, including memos, reports, and correspondence, from August 2006 to September 2010, and the personal notes, drafts, and correspondence of Chris Mumma. I also relied on Willie’s own correspondence over the same period.

  For details of the ongoing, final meetings of the Actual Innocence Commission, from November 2002 to October 2006, I relied on meeting minutes and working papers from the group itself.

  CHAPTERS 31–32

  Chapters 31 and 32 follow the IIC’s investigation into Willie’s case from September 2010, when it received his application, to April 2012, the close of his eight-member hearing.

  Interviews: Willie Grimes, Betty Shuford Hairston, Teresa Hamlett, Jamie Lau, Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, Chris Mumma, Gladys Perkins, Sharon Stellato, and Bryan Stewart.

  Unpublished documents: For details of Willie’s time in prison, I relied again on his files from the North Carolina Department of Correction, the North Carolina Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission, and the Center on Actual Innocence, and all they include, listed previously. I also relied again on Ed de Torres’s attorney file and the personal correspondence of Chris Mumma and Willie Grimes.

  For details of the IIC’s investigation, in addition to my own interviews with IIC staffers, I relied on testimony given afterward by Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, Jamie Lau, Sharon Stellato, and Dustin Nowatka at the IIC’s eight-member hearing in April 2012 and three-judge panel the following October. The Center on Actual Innocence file on Willie Grimes contains notes, memos, correspondence, progress reports, and summaries, including summaries of the interviews conducted by Jamie Lau and Sharon Stellato with friends, relatives, attorneys, acquaintances, or victims of Willie Grimes and Albert Turner. Turner’s criminal history is drawn from records of the Hickory Police Department, the Catawba County sheriff’s office, and the NC Department of Correction. Of course I also relied on the full record of Willie’s IIC hearing. In addition to the transcript, a video recording of that proceeding is available through WRAL, at www.wral.com/news/local/asset_gallery/10937343.

  For details of the various suspect lineups and which documents appeared in one police folder but not the other, I relied on the Hickory Police Department file on Willie Grimes as well as Steve Hunt’s personal investigative file.

  For details of the AFIS software and its search run on the fingerprints recovered from Carrie Elliott’s apartment, I relied on the relevant AFIS match report and North Carolina State Crime Laboratory report, both dated November 2011.

  For details of the passing of Carrie Lee Elliott, in addition to my interview with one of her surviving grandchildren, I also consulted Ms. Elliott’s death record.

  As with Willie’s 1988 trial in Chapter 1, several of the witnesses called during Willie’s hearing I present in the narrative out of the sequence they were actually called to testify. I’ve done this only for clarity, so that readers can follow events chronologically, without the confusing out-of-order sequence in which witnesses actually were called. I’ve done the same with some of the interviews conducted during the IIC’s investigation, and for the same reason. I have changed no content from any of these interviews or testimonies, only their sequence, so that readers may follow them logically.

  CHAPTERS 33–35

  These chapters follow preparations for, and the event of, Willie’s three-judge panel, from April to October 2012.

  Interviews: Robert Campbell, Dwayne Dail, Jay Gaither, Willie Grimes, Teresa Hamlett, Jamie Lau, Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, Eddie Moose, Chris Mumma, Gladys Perkins, Louie Ross, Sharon Stellato, Bryan Stewart, Cheryl Sullivan, and Greg Taylor.

  Unpublished documents: For details of Chris Mumma’s and Robert Campbell’s work to prepare for the three-judge panel, I relied on the Center on Actual Innocence file on Willie Grimes, including correspondence, notes, memos, press releases, CVs for Robert Drdak and Jennifer E. Dysart, and a polygraph examination of Willie Grimes from September 21, 2012. I also relied on the personal correspondence of Chris Mumma and notes and exhibits by Robert Campbell. For the panel itself, of course, I relied on its transcript. I also relied on video footage of the proceeding, recorded by Gregg Jamback at Swiftwater Media. Gregg was in the courtroom to film a documentary on a different case. He kindly shared his unused footage with me.

  As with prior trials and hearings, several of the witnesses called during Willie’s three-judge panel I present here out of the sequence they were actually called to testify. I’ve done this only for clarity, so that readers can follow events chronologically, without the confusing out-of-order sequence in which witnesses were actually called.

  CHAPTER 36

  Chapter 36 follows the events after Willie’s exoneration, from October 2012 to 2016.

  Interviews: Burton Craige, at Patterson Harkavy LLP; Willie Grimes; Betty Shuford Hairston; Teresa Hamlett; Thomas Hill; Eddie Moose; Chris Mumma; G. Chris Olson, at Martin and Jones PLLC; Gladys Perkins; Maurice Possley, at the National Registry of Exonerations; Louie Ross; Bryan Stewart; and Afton Turner.

  Unpublished documents: For details on the legal processes of removing Willie’s name from the sex-offender registry, regaining his license, and applying for compensation, I relied on the Center on Actual Innocence file on Willie Grimes. I also relied on correspondence from the North Carolina Industrial Commission, the North Carolina Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission, and the North Carolina Department of Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles. For details on Albert Turner’s death, I relied on his autopsy report, available through the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
For details of the outcome of Willie’s civil lawsuit, I relied on the settlement agreement itself.

  Several figures with meaningful roles in the story, though I reached out to them, declined to comment. These include Eric Bellas, Steve Hunt, Ed de Torres, Linda McDowell, and Colon Willoughby.

  Sources

  Alexander, Maggie. “Judge Rules in Cummings Hearing.” WECT (Wilmington, North Carolina). January 27, 2005.

  . “Race, Politics Not a Factor in Murder Trial, Judge Rules.” WECT (Wilmington, North Carolina). January 28, 2005.

  Allen Mitchell Funeral Home. “Albert Lindsay Turner: January 15, 1947–March 7, 2016.” March 2016.

  American Bar Association. “Toward Greater Awareness: The American Bar Association Call for a Moratorium on Executions Gains Ground.” August 2001.

  Associated Press. “Inmates’ Claims Could Get Review.” Charlotte Observer, 2006.

  . “James Parker: Victims Recant, Accused ‘Molester’ Freed.” November 30, 2004.

  . “Judge Charges New Man in Rape Case After Panel Clears Gaston Man.” Gaston Gazette, October 17, 2012.

  . “Man Is Put to Death for Double Slaying During Crime Spree.” New York Times, October 24, 1992.

  . “North Carolina Death Penalty Panel Urged to Halt Executions.” News 14 Carolina, January 4, 2007.

  . “Police Hunt for Suspect in Murder Outside Church.” Wilmington Morning Star, August 21, 1987.

  . “Taylor Will Have to Wait for Pardon.” News and Observer, May 8, 2010.

  Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002).

  Balko, Radley. “How the Flawed ‘Science’ of Bite Mark Analysis Has Sent Innocent People to Prison.” Washington Post, February 13, 2015.