The national media paints North Carolina with a red state brush but those of us who are from there know that the state has a strong liberal streak. Atticus lives: In 2004, the state voted decisively for Bush/Cheney but also reelected a Dem governor and gave the Dems control of both houses of the legistlature. On Thursday, they passed a law creating the nation’s first innocence commission:
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley Thursday signed into law a bill establishing an innocence inquiry commission which will review appeals by inmates who claim they have been wrongly convicted. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is modeled after the system in the United Kingdom and is the first of its kind in the US. Inmates who have new evidence to present which was not previously considered in court can bring their innocence claims to the eight-member panel beginning in November. If five or more commission members consider the evidence to be a potential consideration for innocence, the case will then go to a group of three North Carolina Superior Court judges. A unanimous decision by the three judges is necessary to overturn a conviction.
The innocence commission was prompted based on wrongful convictions in several high profile cases in North Carolina, including Darryl Hunt, who was found innocent of murder based on DNA evidence after serving 18 years in jail, and Alan Gell, who was released from death row based on evidence that prosecutors purposefully withheld in his trial.
