SIGN CHANGE.ORG PETITION AT THE LINK BELOW:
https://www.change.org/p/demand-nc-governor-to-commute-ronnie-long-s-sentence-immediately
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PLEA: "Contact NC Governor 919-814-2000 & demand he commute Ronnie Long's sentence immediately! Call DAILY! Call from anywhere in the world! We must let him know that the world is watching! The NC Governor & the NC Attorney General have both made public statements claiming they care about & support #BlackLivesMatter yet their ACTIONS prove otherwise! They have been making these statements while at the same time they are keeping an INNOCENT BLACK MAN in prison despite the overwhelming evidence of his innocence & police misconduct! Ronnie Long has been wrongfully imprisoned since May 10, 1976. Ronnie was convicted by an all white jury, with no evidence linking him to the crimes other than the contaminated, cross-racial eye witness identification. We now know how unreliable eye witness identification is, especially cross-racial identification. Ronnie was at home, with his mother, on the telephone when the alleged crime took place. Unfortunately, phone records were not available in 1976. Detectives withheld exculpatory evidence from Ronnie's defense attorneys in 1976. To this day, the State of North Carolina is still withholding exculpatory evidence! In 2005, the Master Case File was discovered by attorneys with the UNC Innocence Project. This file contained the test results of the evidence that had been withheld in 1976. ALL test results came back NEGATIVE for Ronnie! Despite this newly discovered evidence and proof that the State broke the law, the NC Supreme Court rendered a 3-3 TIE decision with the 7th judge declining to vote in 2008. The 7th judge was allowed to retire without voting and the judge who replaced the retired judge did not feel comfortable making a vote because they did not hear the arguments. In 2015, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission (NCIIC) found more exculpatory evidence meaning that the State of North Carolina yet again broke the law by not turning over everything pertaining to this case as was ordered by a judge back in 2005! Over 60 fingerprints were taken from the crime scene and they do NOT match Ronnie! A list of 6 other suspects was also discovered. The NCIIC closed Ronnie's case despite finding more exculpatory evidence and is currently refusing to release the files to Ronnie's attorneys. The NCIIC is supposed to be a neutral organization and has never had an issue with sharing files once a case is closed until Ronnie's case. Ronnie's case is currently in the 4th circuit Federal Court of Appeals. Ronnie had an en banc hearing on May 7, 2020. We are currently awaiting a decision from that hearing. For everything Free Ronnie Long, please visit:
www.freeronnielongnow.org
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: FLAWED IDENTIFICATION: "As an experimental psychologist who conducts research on eyewitness identification, I’ve seen hundreds of examples of highly confident yet mistaken eyewitnesses – both in the laboratory and in actual court cases. My review of the transcripts from Grant’s trial suggests a simple explanation for these high-confidence mistakes: The police did not use scientific best practices for collecting the eyewitness identification evidence. Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. Just as double-blind clinical trials in medical studies are intended to prevent patients’ and doctors’ expectations from affecting outcomes of the clinical trial, double-blind lineups aim to prevent witnesses’ and administrators’ expectations from influencing the outcomes of the identification procedure.”How did six eyewitnesses identify the wrong man in a murder," by Laura Smalarz, published by The Daily Beast on July 11, 2020. (Laura Smalarz is an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University.)
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Long was 20 years old in 1976 when he was arrested in Concord for the rape of Sarah Bost, a 54-year-old widow. "They got the wrong man," said Jamie Lau, a supervising attorney with the Duke Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic. "Ronnie Long is absolutely innocent of this crime.” Lau said Long, who had been a talented high school athlete, was facing a minor trespassing charge when cops asked the victim to come to court that day. "They dressed her in a disguise, brought her to the courtroom. She sat there for an hour and a half in the presence of Mr. Long without identifying him," Lau said. "When Long's name was called, she identified him as the person who assaulted her ... and she later testified that she selected him because he looked most similar to her attacker of all the people who were present in the courtroom that day.” But the victim had originally described her attacker as a "light-colored" Black man, which Long is not. And while a shoe print found outside the victim's home had a similar tread, it could not be matched to shoes owned by Long. There was also clothing — including a black leather coat — found in Long's car that looked like what the rapist wore. "It was a ubiquitous piece of clothing for Black males at the time, in part because the movie 'Shaft' had come out a few years prior," Lau said. At trial, Long didn't take the stand, but several alibi witnesses testified to seeing him at the time of the rape. "Every moment of his day had been accounted for," Lau said. The all-White jury convicted Long of rape and burglary. He was given two life sentences."--------------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "An all-White jury convicted a Black man of rape in 1976. Now, lawyers say evidence was hidden from the defense," reported by CBS News on July 17, 2020.
GIST: "A federal appeals court is expected to rule any day on whether to overturn a 44-year-old rape conviction. In 1976, there were angry protests in Concord, North Carolina after the conviction of a young Black man, Ronnie Wallace Long, accused of raping a prominent White woman.
Now, lawyers for Long, who accuse investigators of lying about evidence, are trying to right what they say is a wrongful conviction.
Long, who is now 64 years old, told "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty that he never had a chance for a fair trial in what was back then a mostly segregated community.
"So now you tell me, you got a young Black man in 1976 in front of a White jury … for a sexual assault of a rich, wealthy, White female. I mean, what kind of justice is that?" Long said.
Long was 20 years old in 1976 when he was arrested in Concord for the rape of Sarah Bost, a 54-year-old widow.
"They got the wrong man," said Jamie Lau, a supervising attorney with the Duke Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic. "Ronnie Long is absolutely innocent of this crime."
Lau said Long, who had been a talented high school athlete, was facing a minor trespassing charge when cops asked the victim to come to court that day.
"They dressed her in a disguise, brought her to the courtroom. She sat there for an hour and a half in the presence of Mr. Long without identifying him," Lau said. "When Long's name was called, she identified him as the person who assaulted her ... and she later testified that she selected him because he looked most similar to her attacker of all the people who were present in the courtroom that day."
But the victim had originally described her attacker as a "light-colored" Black man, which Long is not. And while a shoe print found outside the victim's home had a similar tread, it could not be matched to shoes owned by Long. There was also clothing — including a black leather coat — found in Long's car that looked like what the rapist wore.
"It was a ubiquitous piece of clothing for Black males at the time, in part because the movie 'Shaft' had come out a few years prior," Lau said.
At trial, Long didn't take the stand, but several alibi witnesses testified to seeing him at the time of the rape.
"Every moment of his day had been accounted for," Lau said.
The all-White jury convicted Long of rape and burglary. He was given two life sentences.
"I felt like somebody had hit me with a bat," said Long's older sister, Lynda Smith, who was there for the verdict. "Everything just fell down because I just knew — I wasn't expecting that."
She wasn't the only one. Concord erupted. "Oh my God. It was a terrible sight. They went crazy," Smith said. "They was breaking windows. They was turning over police cars. They was running out through the street."
Bost died believing that Long was the man who attacked her, but Lau said victims can convince themselves the wrong person was their attacker.
"There's very clear examples of people believing with high levels of confidence that they have identified the right attacker only to later be proven wrong," he said.
About 30 years after Long's conviction, his attorneys learned that investigators had tested more than a dozen pieces of evidence and had hidden the results.
"Not only did they hide evidence, but then they took the stand while under oath and lied about the evidence," Lau said.
The defense did not know there were 43 fingerprints found at the crime scene that didn't match Long, as well as a hair at the crime scene that did not match Long, Lau said. They also didn't know there was a rape kit with evidence taken from the victim.
"My reaction was 'Oh, my brother's coming home now,'" Smith said about learning about the evidence. "But they still ain't let him out."
Long's only child, Carlos Spears, was 3 when his dad went to prison. He's now 47.
"I want the world to know that Cabarrus County locked up an innocent man and they need to go ahead and give him justice," Spears said.
But, in May, at a federal appeals court, the North Carolina attorney general's office argued that none of the evidence hidden at trial would have changed the verdict.
"Christmas times, cookouts, ... we always miss Ronnie," Smith said. "Somebody's missing … it's just like a burden — carrying a burden all the time."
"Somebody's in prison for something he didn't do," she said.
The North Carolina attorney general's office declined to talk about the pending case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is expected to rule soon.
Meanwhile, Long's attorney is asking Governor Roy Cooper to commute his sentence and send him home.
One of the detectives in Long's case later went to prison for stealing checks."The entire story can be read at:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ronnie-long-north-carolina-rape-conviction/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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