Charles Ray Finch Becomes 166^th Death-Row Exoneree as North Carolina Prosecutor Formally Drops All Charges

In July 1976, false foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny and an eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion manip­u­lat­ed by police mis­con­duct sent Charles Ray Finch to North Carolina​’s death row. Forty-three years lat­er, he has become the 166^th per­son in the United States since 1973 to be exon­er­at­ed after hav­ing been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. On June 14, 2019, after a fed­er­al appeals court said Finch had proven his ​“actu­al inno­cence” and a fed­er­al dis­trict court had giv­en the state 30 days to decide whether to attempt to retry him, the Wilson County District Attorney qui­et­ly and with­out advance notice to coun­sel for­mal­ly dis­missed all charges against Finch, com­plet­ing his exoneration.

Finch is the sec­ond per­son in 2019 to be exon­er­at­ed more than forty years after hav­ing been sen­tenced to death. In March, Clifford Williams, Jr. was exon­er­at­ed 42 years after hav­ing been sen­tenced to death in Florida. According to the Death Penalty Information Center inno­cence list, Finch’s case was the 10^th time this decade an exon­er­a­tion has tak­en 30 years or more. All of those exonerees have been black. In 18 cas­es — more than 10% of the exon­er­a­tions — it has tak­en a quar­ter cen­tu­ry before the exoneree’s rights have been vin­di­cat­ed. The 166^th exon­er­a­tion came just days before the nation’s 1,500^th exe­cu­tion on June 20. In the mod­ern era of the U.S. death penal­ty, there has now been one exon­er­a­tion for every 9 executions.

Finch was wrong­ly con­vict­ed in 1976 of mur­der­ing a gro­cery store clerk dur­ing a rob­bery. He was sen­tenced to death under North Carolina’s manda­to­ry death sen­tenc­ing law, which was struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al soon there­after. In 1977, the North Carolina Supreme Court vacat­ed Finch’s death sen­tence and resen­tenced him to life in prison. In January 2019, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found him ​“actu­al­ly inno­cent” and sent the case back to a low­er court for adju­di­ca­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions relat­ing to his inno­cence claim. He was freed on May 23, 2019, when U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle for­mal­ly over­turned his con­vic­tion and gave pros­e­cu­tors 30 days to decide whether to retry him. With the dis­missal of charges, Finch has now been fully exonerated.

In the Fourth Circuit deci­sion that declared Finch ​“actu­al­ly inno­cent,” Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory wrote that ​“Finch has over­come the exact­ing stan­dard for actu­al inno­cence through suf­fi­cient­ly alleg­ing and pro­vid­ing new evi­dence of a con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tion and through demon­strat­ing that the total­i­ty of the evi­dence, both old and new, would like­ly fail to con­vince any rea­son­able juror of his guilt beyond a rea­son­able doubt.” The court iden­ti­fied major prob­lems with the evi­dence used to con­vict Finch. He was sub­ject­ed to ​“sug­ges­tive line­ups,” in which he was the only sus­pect dressed in a three-quar­ter length jack­et, the same style of cloth­ing that the eye­wit­ness, Lester Floyd Jones, said the per­pe­tra­tor was wear­ing. Such line­ups have since been declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. ​“These pro­ce­dur­al issues sup­port Finch’s alle­ga­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al error that he was misiden­ti­fied by Jones,” Judge Gregory wrote. ​“No rea­son­able juror would like­ly find Finch guilty beyond a rea­son­able doubt if it knew the high like­li­hood that he was misiden­ti­fied by Jones both out­side and inside the court­room as a mur­der sus­pect because of the imper­mis­si­bly sug­ges­tive line­ups.” The deci­sion also not­ed that Jones – who the court said ​“had cog­ni­tive issues, strug­gled with alco­holism and had issues with short-term mem­o­ry recall” – told police that the killer was armed with a sawed-off shot­gun and had nev­er men­tioned to the police that the shoot­er had any facial hair. At the time Holloman was killed, Finch had a long beard and dis­tinc­tive side­burns and at tri­al Jones changed his descrip­tion of the shoot­er to fit Finch’s appear­ance. A new review of the autop­sy evi­dence decades after the crime dis­closed that Holloman had been killed with a pis­tol, not a shot­gun and new bal­lis­tics evi­dence con­tra­dict­ed pros­e­cu­tion claims that the shells found at the crime scene matched a shot­gun shell found in Finch’s car. Other wit­ness­es also indi­cat­ed they had been pres­sured into pro­vid­ing tes­ti­mo­ny impli­cat­ing Finch. ​“This new evi­dence,” the court said, ​“not only under­cuts the state’s phys­i­cal evi­dence, but it also dis­cred­its the reli­a­bil­i­ty of Jones.”

Jim Coleman, co-direc­tor of the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic, rep­re­sent­ed Finch for more than 15 years. He said that when he took on the case, he con­tact­ed every major state offi­cial, seek­ing review of Finch’s case. ​“The worst thing that we encounter in the work that we do are indif­fer­ent offi­cials — police offi­cers, sher­iffs, pros­e­cu­tors and judges — who think that jus­tice has been done when there is a con­vic­tion, and noth­ing that hap­pens after a con­vic­tion mat­ters,” Coleman said. ​“We have a human sys­tem and there­fore we make mis­takes. It is the oblig­a­tion of every­body in the sys­tem to be con­cerned when mis­takes are made and to take action to cor­rect them.” An edi­to­r­i­al in The Wilson Times, which chron­i­cled Finch’s case, called the case a ​“cau­tion­ary tale to law enforce­ment offi­cers and pros­e­cu­tors” and not­ed that the per­son who actu­al­ly killed Richard Holloman was nev­er held account­able. Finch’s daugh­ter, Katherine Jones-Bailey said the wrong­ful con­vic­tion vic­tim­ized both her fam­i­ly and Holloman’s. ​“They still didn’t get jus­tice,” she said. ​“We all end up suf­fer­ing at my dad’s expense.”

Finch spent 43 years in prison, more than any oth­er death-row exoneree in mod­ern times. He is the ninth per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row in North Carolina. Seven of the North Carolina death-row exonerees are black; an eighth is Latino. All of the North Carolina death-row exon­er­a­tions involved wit­ness per­jury or false accu­sa­tion, and eight also involved offi­cial mis­con­duct. Those two fac­tors are the most preva­lent caus­es of wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions in the United States.