The N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission’s process for conducting its hearings needs updating in the wake of the denial Thursday of innocence claims from four men in a high-profile Forsyth County murder case, former District Attorney Tom Keith says.
An eight-member panel within the commission conducted a hearing in March 2020 about the innocence claims of four men who had been convicted in the 2002 murder of Nathaniel Jones, the grandfather of NBA star Chris Paul.
“It (was) such a one-sided presentation that the prosecution might as well have stayed home since there (was) no cross- examination of the evidence presented to the commission members by its investigators,” Keith said. “And the prosecution (could not) put on rebuttal evidence that would cast doubt on the commission investigators’ findings, either.”
Thursday’s decision happened in Forsyth Superior Court where a three-judge panel had listened to eight days of testimony. The ruling was the last part of a long process that started in 2015 when Christopher Bryant filed a claim with the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission.
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As teenagers, Bryant, Jermal Tolliver, Rayshawn Banner, Nathaniel Cauthen and the late Dorrell Brayboy were charged with the murder of Jones. Winston-Salem police charged the teens after hours of interrogation by police detectives.
Bryant, Tolliver, Banner and Cauthen told the commission staff, commission members and the judges that they were innocent and that every time they told detectives that they didn’t have anything to do with Jones’ death, the investigators accused them of lying.
Cauthen and Banner are serving life in prison, but with the possibility of parole. Bryant, Tolliver and Brayboy were released from prison between 2017 and 2018.
In August 2019, Brayboy was stabbed to death was stabbed to death in the parking of the Food Lion store on New Walkertown Road.
The hearing before the three-judge panel in Winston-Salem allowed prosecutors to cross-examine witnesses including the defendants, Keith said.
“And the prosecution can present its own evidence as well,” Keith said. “In essence, the three-judge panel hearing follows the normal structure of any trial in any court or any administrative hearing anywhere in North Carolina.”
Based on the judges’ ruling in Forsyth Superior Court, those judges “must have disregarded much of the eight member panel’s conclusions, which were based on the commission investigators’ presentation or found their evidence less than convincing because the judges held the claimants failed to prove their innocence,” Keith said.
“Perhaps if the commission’s rules were changed so that the prosecution had the right of cross-examination and (to) present evidence before the panel of eight at a second hearing, the three-judge panel would not have been necessary,” Keith said.
The three-judge panel’s ruling was not surprising, said Ronald Wright, a law professor at the Wake Forest University School of Law.
“A denial of innocence claims is the most common outcome from three-judge panels that are convened through the Innocence Commission process,” Wright said. “Such an outcome was typical for this system.”
Geneva Bryant, the mother of Christopher Bryant, sat on her front porch Thursday after the judges’ ruling, but she declined to give an extensive interview to a Journal reporter.
“I’m disappointed,” she said. “I don’t feel like taking to nobody right now.”
Shortly afterward, Bryant got up and went back inside her house in southeastern Winston-Salem.
Mayor Allen Joines said he had not heard about the judges’ decision when he was contacted Thursday evening for a reaction.
“I just assume that the judges did not hear anything that was compelling to change their decision,” Joines said. “I did not know anything about the case other than what I was reading in the paper and other media.”
Lisa Hannah, Brayboy’s mother, said she was upset that no one on either side of the case asked in court if she was there. Even though her son is dead, she said, they could have given her that much respect.
“I was sitting there in court, and no one came to me,” she said, adding that the district attorney’s office did not return her phone calls.
“They did ask about the other parents there,” she said.