WINSTON-SALEM — Judges Thursday denied claims of innocence by four men who were convicted of killing NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather when they were teenagers, despite the fact that a key witness recanted his testimony.
In 2020, the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Innocence found enough evidence of factual innocence to send their cases to a three-judge Superior Court panel.
But on Thursday, after an eight-day hearing in a Forsyth County court, a three-judge panel rejected the claims of defendants Rayshawn Banner, Christopher Bryant, Nathaniel Cauthen and Jermal Tolliver, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. .
Nathaniel Jones, 61, died of a heart attack outside his Winston-Salem home after being tied up, beaten and robbed in November 2002. His grandson Paul was a standout high school basketball player at the time and now plays for the Phoenix Suns. .
Cauthen and his brother, Banner, who were 15 and 14 years old at the time of Jones’ death, were convicted of first-degree murder and are serving life in prison. Bryant, Tolliver and Dorrell Brayboy, all 15 years old at the time, were convicted of second-degree murder and released after serving time in prison. Brayboy was fatally stabbed outside a Winston-Salem supermarket in 2019.
The men were charged after hours of questioning by Winston-Salem police detectives, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. They told commission staff, commission members and judges that they were innocent and that every time they told detectives they had nothing to do with Jones’s death, they were accused of lying, according to the newspaper. .
In some cases, they said police detectives threatened them with the death penalty. Bryant said a detective pointed to a spot on his arm and said it would be where a lethal injection needle would go. Bryant said that minutes later, he began to implicate himself.
No definitive physical evidence linked the men to the crime scene, including fingerprints taken from Jones’ vehicle. The commission also conducted post-conviction DNA tests on items from the crime scene, but there was no match to the men.
Chris Paul has not made any public statement about the hearing. Robin Paul, his mother and his aunt, Rhonda Hairston, took the stand Wednesday and said they believe the men convicted of Jones’s murder are guilty.
Jessicah Black, who was a teenager when she met the boys two months before Jones’s death, testified that she dated and drove them, often smoking marijuana. Black told police and testified in two trials that she heard some of the children talking about robbing Jones and that she was sitting at a picnic table in Belview Park, about 100 yards from Jones’ home, and could hear Jones scream during the attack.
Black, now 36, has since recanted all of his previous testimony, telling in court last week that it was all lies. She said police detectives forced her to make a false statement and told her that if she didn’t say what they wanted to hear, she would go to prison for life for murder. She was never criminally charged.
Reference-nsjonline.com