After an audit of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) con­duct­ed by for­mer FBI agents at the request of North Carolina’s attor­ney gen­er­al, it was revealed that offi­cials with­held blood evi­dence affect­ing 269 defen­dants. The report list­ed three death penal­ty cas­es that result­ed in exe­cu­tions. Although each of the exe­cut­ed defen­dants con­fessed to the crimes, such con­fes­sions are some­times sus­pect and evi­dence with­held by the state might have at least led to a less­er sen­tence. Desmond Carter, who was exe­cut­ed in 2002, was rep­re­sent­ed by attor­neys who were inex­pe­ri­enced and unqual­i­fied to han­dle his cap­i­tal case. The attor­neys nev­er eval­u­at­ed and chal­lenged the SBI evi­dence, only assum­ing the evi­dence was true. Another impact­ed case was that of John Hardy Rose, who con­fessed to killing his neigh­bor. Ken Rose, his attor­ney (no rela­tion), said there was doubt as to whether his crime was pre­med­i­tat­ed or impul­sive. Rose said he believes pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed neg­a­tive results of a test for blood could have been used to secure a life sen­tence or a sec­ond-degree mur­der con­vic­tion for his client, who was exe­cut­ed in 2001. The final exe­cut­ed defen­dant was Joseph Timothy Keel. His lawyers are still explor­ing how the with­held evi­dence might have affect­ed his case. Jay Ferguson, one of the lawyers, lament­ed, “[T]here are no do-overs with the death penal­ty. We can’t go back and fix these errors.”

Four oth­er cap­i­tal defen­dants whose cas­es were men­tioned in the SBI report remain on North Carolina’s death row: Patricia Jennings, John Robert Elliott, Terry Lee Ball, and Chris Roseboro. Alan Gell was exon­er­at­ed and freed from the state’s death row after an ear­li­er inves­ti­ga­tion showed that cru­cial evi­dence had been with­held in his case. He received a sub­stan­tial set­tle­ment from the government.

(J. Neff and M. Locke, ​“For exe­cut­ed men, audit’s too late,” News & Observer, August 19, 2010). See also Arbitrariness and Innocence.

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