Panel could free Joseph Sledge in 1976 slaying of mother and daughter
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- A three-judge panel will consider Friday whether a 70-year-old inmate was wrongfully convicted nearly four decades ago of killing a mother and daughter in North Carolina.
The judges were appointed by the state Supreme Court after the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission found enough evidence of Joseph Sledge's innocence to recommend a judicial review.
Sledge walked into the courtroom with his attorney Chris Mumma around 10:10 a.m. on Friday. Behind him were his two siblings. Seated alongside Innocence Commission members were two men who have been freed by DNA evidence after spending decades in prison.
At a commission hearing in December, forensic experts testified that fingerprints, DNA and hair gathered at the scene didn't belong to Sledge.
The defense first called Columbus County Clerk Of Court, Rita Batchelor, to the stand. Batchelor testified about the August 2012 day she and a colleague discovered key evidence in the case.
They were cleaning out "Vault 1," where evidence is kept for old cases, including Sledge's 1976 case. Only the High Clerk had the combination for the massive vault, and Batchelor's colleague found an envelope of his evidence pushed to the back of a top shelf.
"She was up on the top of the ladder and she was pulling boxes and just different things out and she pulled out this envelope and it had his name," Batchelor testified. "And she said 'this is like in the Joseph Sledge [case]' and she said 'This must be something, the hairs they were looking for.'"
A key jailhouse informant, Herman Baker, signed an affidavit in 2013 recanting trial testimony that helped convict Sledge, according to the commission. Baker testified at the commission hearing that he lied at the 1978 trial after being promised leniency in his own drug case and he said he'd been coached by authorities on what to say.
Sledge was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Victims Josephine Davis and her adult daughter, Aileen, were found stabbed to death in September 1976 in their home in Elizabethtown. A day before the killings, Sledge had escaped from a prison work farm where he was serving a four-year sentence for larceny.
Sledge maintained his innocence in the killings. In 2003, a judge granted a request for new DNA testing of evidence in the case, but the testing didn't start until five years later.
Batchelor said she and the colleague had searched for the evidence in previous years, and at times, there was confusion over who was responsible for searching.
"We just couldn't find anything," Batchelor testified. "I think there was a lot of confusion as to who had what."
The Innocence Commission's brief on the case says lab testing in 2010 and 2012 ruled out Sledge as the source of DNA or hair found at the scene.
The commission's website says its investigations have led to the exonerations of seven people since it began operation in 2007. The panel is the only state-run investigative agency dedicated to examining post-conviction claims of innocence. It has completed reviews of about 1,500 cases.
The nonprofit Innocence Project says there have been 325 post-conviction DNA exonerations in U.S. history.
A decision on Sledge is expected today.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
