Thanks to Gerda Stein of North Carolina's Center for Death Penalty Litigation for forwarding all the coverage linked below.
The News & Observer of Raleigh has the editorial, "Blood-hounded."
Greg Taylor's claim that he was railroaded into prison, wrongfully convicted of murder, turned out to be ... true! So three Superior Court judges concluded after a hearing that broke new ground for North Carolina's justice system.
Taylor, set free after 17 years, is joyful at his exoneration. The rest of us can take satisfaction in knowing that this state now has a method capable of identifying cases where the courts, in punishing the innocent, have failed.
"Case shows wisdom of innocence process," is the editorial in the Charlotte Observer.
It exposes an incredibly sloppy police investigation of the murder, a badly handled prosecution case that ignored common sense and an incompetent defense that failed to investigate the flawed evidence prosecutors used to convict Taylor.
It confirms the wisdom of former N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverly Lake in commissioning a study of whether the state should create a formal process to hear credible cases of actual innocence from prison inmates. The legislature later created the Innocence Inquiry Commission, the first of its type in the nation, to consider such cases. Sadly, there have been too many cases of wrongful convictions in this state.
The Greensboro News & Record has, "State innocence panel finally delivers justice."
Freed from prison after serving 17 years for a crime he didn’t commit, Gregory Taylor joins a handful of men who belatedly received elusive justice from a system that can and does make mistakes.
When the unique, three-judge state Innocence Commission announced its decision on Wednesday, Darryl Hunt, Joseph Abbitt and Dwayne Dial were there.
All had languished for years in prison until being freed following lengthy court appeals. Taylor, however, was the first to be exonerated by the new state panel, which offers a slim ray of hope to the wrongly convicted.
For these men, there’s little solace in the platitude that the justice system usually works. Years away from families and shattered lives can never be replaced or fully mended.
"An innocent man free at last - a win for all of us," is in the Rocky Mount Telegram.
His newfound freedom is a success story, too, for the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, a one-of-a-kind institution in the United States. The commission should serve as a model for all states to emulate. Its work in Taylor’s case alone has been priceless.
The happy ending to Taylor’s story — he has maintained all along that he is innocent in the death of Jacquetta Thomas — isn’t comfortable to all of us. It exposes too many flaws within our criminal justice system — a rush to judgment based in part on shaky evidence and plea bargains for testimony, to name a few.
If an innocent man can be forced to give up 17 years of his life for a crime he didn’t commit, how can we fix the system so this doesn’t happen again?
There isn’t an easy answer to that.
The Herald Sun carries, "Establishing innocence."
In establishing the Innocence Inquiry Commission, the North Carolina General Assembly did three very risky things.
First, legislators accepted the overwhelming evidence that the justice system is imperfect and puts an unknown number of innocent people behind bars.
Second, they agreed that the appeals system offers insufficient relief for the wrongfully imprisoned, and established a backstop that could -- and now does -- get some of those people out of jail.
Third, by adding that opportunity, it opened the state to a new class of lawsuits from former inmates whose innocence has been established and vetted by a state-funded panel of judges.
The things we have taken from Greg Taylor can't be restored, but it seems inevitable that some court will end up pondering the question of how much we owe in exchange for 6,149 days of a man's life.
Whatever it is, we ought to pay it, and with good will.
Today's News & Observer has the news article, "Freedom looks good for Greg Taylor," by Mandy Locke.
The Department of Correction owed Taylor $45 and a stack of certificates meant to help him navigate the free world. He collected a transcript tallying the community college classes he took in prison, a list of county agencies that could help him apply for a job, a fresh Social Security card so he could apply for a driver's license. It's all Taylor cared to carry from his old life.
"This is no place to be. No place to waste your life," Taylor said, shaking his head.
On his first full day of freedom after a panel of judges reversed the 1993 conviction, Taylor tried to shed the remnants of his former life. He hit the mall, trading in his prison-issued, horn-rimmed glasses for a snazzy pair of brand-name wire frames. He took a shower without his prison-issued shower shoes, behind the privacy of a curtain.
Earlier coverage is here.
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