On September 22, Kenneth Kagonyera and Robert Wilcoxson (pic­tured l. to r.) were exon­er­at­ed of mur­der and freed from prison in North Carolina after a spe­cial com­mis­sion ruled they were inno­cent. The two men spent a decade in prison after plead­ing guilty to sec­ond-degree mur­der. They have con­sis­tent­ly main­tained their inno­cence, claim­ing that they only pled guilty because they were threat­ened with the death penal­ty and feared exe­cu­tion. The exon­er­a­tions came after a 3‑judge pan­el of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission found suf­fi­cient evi­dence point­ing to the men’s inno­cence, includ­ing a con­fes­sion from anoth­er man and DNA test­ing that impli­cat­ed oth­er sus­pects. Ken Rose, an attor­ney with the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said, ​“Along with exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son, coerc­ing a guilty plea with the threat of lethal injec­tion under­scores the ter­rif­ic risk asso­ci­at­ed with hav­ing a death penal­ty.… This case high­lights the sub­stan­tial threat that the use of the death penal­ty pos­es to inno­cent per­sons. In North Carolina in just the last sev­er­al years, three inno­cent men — Edward Chapman, Levon Jones and Jonathon Hoffman — were exon­er­at­ed from death row.”

(J. Ostendorff, ​“Judges free men in Asheville inno­cence hear­ing,” Asheville Citizen-Times, September 22, 2011; Statement from the Center for Deaht Penalty Litigation, September 22, 2011). See Innocence.

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