News Brief — North Carolina Innocence Commission Orders Review of Murder Convictions of Teens Falsely Threatened With Death Penalty

NEWS (3/​13/​20): The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission vot­ed 5 – 3 on March 13, 2020 to empan­el a three-judge review com­mit­tee to deter­mine whether four men con­vict­ed as teens should be exon­er­at­ed of the mur­der of NBA star Chris Paul’s grand­fa­ther, Nathaniel Jones. A fifth teen con­vict­ed in the mur­der died before he could sub­mit his case for review by the Commission.

Nathaniel Cauthen and his younger broth­er, Rayshawn Banner were charged and con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der and sen­tenced to life with­out parole. Christopher Bryant, Jermal Tolliver, and Dorrell Brayboy were con­vict­ed of sec­ond-degree mur­der and sen­tenced to up to 14 years in jail. With the excep­tion of Banner, who was 14 years old, the boys were 15 when they were accused of the mur­der. Bryant and Tolliver were released in 2017 and Brayboy was released in 2018. Brayboy was stabbed to death out­side a super­mar­ket in 2019 before he could sub­mit his appli­ca­tion for the Commission to review his case.

The boys claimed they had been coerced by police into false­ly con­fess­ing, includ­ing being threat­ened with the death penal­ty, which was not a legal pun­ish­ment because of their age. Police reports omit­ted any ref­er­ence to those threats, However, dur­ing the Commission hear­ings, police admit­ted hav­ing invoked the death penal­ty as an inter­view tech­nique when ques­tion­ing two of the boys. Jessicah Black, a white teenag­er who was 16 years old when she became a wit­ness for the pros­e­cu­tion, recant­ed her tes­ti­mo­ny and said dur­ing a sworn depo­si­tion that police had coerced her into false­ly impli­cat­ing the boys.

The Commission found ​“suf­fi­cient evi­dence of fac­tu­al inno­cence” to ask the pan­el of judges to review the case.