news-record.com

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.

When the system does fail, those responsible must be held accountable and steps taken to prevent repeats. And Taylor, 47, is proof that sloppy police work, incompetent legal counsel and prosecutors bent on clearing cases rather than seeking justice can take a fearsome toll.

A Wake County jury convicted Taylor in the 1993 murder of a prostitute whose battered body was found in southeast Raleigh. He was linked to the crime after police found his abandoned truck near the crime scene. Taylor admitted being in the area with another man while buying and using crack cocaine but steadfastly denied involvement in the murder.

Time has shown that what may have seemed then like an open-and-shut case against him was fraught with contradictions and outright deception.

At the Innocence Commission hearing, an SBI technician admitted he withheld key evidence that would have helped Taylor’s cause immeasurably. Deals were struck with prosecution witnesses for shorter prison sentences in their own cases. A jailhouse snitch offered implausible, self-serving testimony against Taylor.

Even as appeal after appeal failed, Taylor persevered. He finally asked the nonprofit N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, which works on behalf of prisoners claiming wrongful conviction, for help, which led to the Innocence Commission hearing and exoneration. 

In this case, tainted evidence clearly was manipulated to convict an innocent man. When that happens, the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system is severely tested. Was this the exception, or the norm?

The fact that of the dozens of files sent to the Innocence Commission, just three cases have been heard and only Taylor’s resulted in freedom suggests the system works well.

But it’s comforting to know that if it doesn’t, North Carolina leads the nation in offering a court of last resort.