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SUB-HEADING: "An accident reconstruction expert called the evidence used to convict Amerson "nothing more than speculation, aided by junk science." The state's own witness agreed."
GIST: "Quincy Marquies Amerson, a client of the Duke Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic, walked free late Wednesday for the first time in more than two decades after the clinic presented exculpatory evidence in his 2001 murder conviction and the state dismissed its case.
Amerson, now 49, spent nearly 23 years in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder in the 1999 death of a child in Harnett County and sentenced to life without parole. He was effectively exonerated of the crime on February 16, after a Superior Court judge found that prejudicial evidence and testimony had denied him a fair trial and vacated his conviction and sentence.
But he had to wait in jail for almost another month until District Attorney Suzanne Matthews signed and filed a dismissal ending the case on March 13.
Amerson was released from the Harnett County Detention Center in Lillington, North Carolina, late Wednesday afternoon. The state didn't give his family or counsel enough notice to witness Amerson's first moment of freedom, but he went home to his parents, who had supported their son throughout his ordeal.
“We are very happy for Quincy and his family. However, there was never any doubt that he was innocent,” said James E. Coleman, Jr., the John S. Bradway Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law and director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic, who has been working to exonerate Amerson since 2006.
“When the prosecutor finally had to address the irrefutable facts demonstrating his innocence, she was forced to concede that the evidence on which the State relied to convict Quincy of murder in 2001 was, in the words of her own expert, ‘invalid’ and did not support the conclusion Quincy had killed the young victim.”
Amerson spent his first full day of freedom savoring time with family and enjoying the simple pleasure of driving around with his father.
"I was always optimistic," Amerson told WRAL. "I never gave up hope. I had loved ones who were along for the whole ride."
He said he passed the time in prison reading, writing, and reaching out to anyone who might be able to help — "anything to keep my mind off of that situation."
Samuel de Sousa Dias Martins Bettini ’24, a member of the most recent team working on the case, noted that Amerson’s release is the culmination of years of effort by Duke Law faculty, students, and alumni.
“While it was extremely frustrating the way the State handled this case from beginning to end, from the initial investigation to the DA's overdue dismissal, we are immensely happy for Quincy and his family,” Bettini said.
“Working on this case has been the most rewarding experience I have had in all these years in law school —and perhaps in my life so far. My hope is that our system can progressively have more prosecutors who are more interested in delivering the truth than winning convictions, more interested in doing what is right than advancing their political agenda.”
Daniel Becker ’09, who was one of the first Duke Law students to work on Amerson’s innocence claim and has remained involved with the case since graduating, said he was pleased by the outcome, though it was long delayed.
“It's great to see the tireless work of the clinic and its teams of students paid off, and I am honored to have been a small part of that larger effort. Most importantly, I'm incredibly happy for Quincy and his family,” said Becker.
“This case is a reminder that sometimes the system gets it wrong, creating a serious injustice that takes years to untangle. I’ve been amazed by the dedication of the clinic and its students over the years, and this favorable result is just the latest example of the incredible work the Duke Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic does.”
Amerson is the 11th North Carolina man to be exonerated by the clinic since its founding in 2008 by Coleman and Charles S. Rhyne Clinical Professor Emerita of Law Theresa Newman ’88.
The clinic's motto is "We never, never, never give up," and students who go through the clinic call themselves "lifers" for their ongoing commitment to its work after they graduate from Duke Law.
Convicted by "speculation, aided by junk science"
Amerson was wrongfully convicted in April 2001 for the death of Sharita Rivera, a 7-year-old girl whose body was found lying on a country road in Johnsonville, North Carolina, in the early morning hours of August 7, 1999.
By the time police arrived on the scene, the girl’s body had been struck by several vehicles, according to witness reports and court testimony. The girl’s mother, Patrice Rivera, was found stabbed to death at their home several miles away.
Police quickly formed a belief that the girl had been hit and killed intentionally, based on their assessment of elements of the scene including blood spray around the child’s body, tire imprints near the road, and the remains of a wheel well liner found a quarter of a mile away.
They arrested Amerson, then 24, who lived two houses from the Riveras, after he told police he had driven the same route that evening in his girlfriend’s car. That vehicle was found to have blood and tissue on the underside and was missing a wheel well liner like the one found. No other physical evidence connecting Amerson to the crime was found in either the Riveras’ home or his, and debris from other cars was found at the site.
But Amerson was convicted by a Harnett County jury of first-degree murder, based in part on the testimony of a state trooper who conducted an initial accident reconstruction that appeared to be focused solely on Amerson.
During his investigation, Coleman learned that the jury was never provided with significant evidence showing that the child was accidentally hit on the road after fleeing her home during or after her mother’s murder. Evidence suggested that up to half a dozen different vehicles, two of them the same model as the car Amerson was driving, struck the child’s body over the course of the night, making her death likely a tragic accident, not criminal murder.
On December 15, 2016, Coleman sent the first of three letters to then-district attorney Vernon K. Stewart and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein asking the state to hire its own credible expert to review the original accident reconstruction report, even offering to share the cost. He never received a reply.
In January 2020 Coleman hired accident reconstruction expert Shawn Harrington to examine the collision site and the evidence presented at trial. He concluded that the state trooper whose initial reconstruction helped convict Amerson had reached erroneous and far-fetched conclusions unsupported by any legitimate methodology.
“His opinions and conclusions are nothing more than speculation aided by junk science,” Harrington said in his report. It is far more likely that the child died after multiple drivers inadvertently struck her on the unlit back road and left the scene, Harrington told Popular Mechanics in a story about the case, calling the trooper’s 1999 reconstruction work “embarrassing.”
Matthews replaced Stewart as Harnett County DA on January 1, 2001. The state eventually did hire its own accident reconstruction expert who essentially reiterated Harrington's findings, testifying in Superior Court on January 17 of this year that the trooper’s conclusions were unsupported and his 1999 reconstruction was invalid. The court found the expert's testimony credible. With that, the state lost evidence “absolutely necessary” to establish probable cause in Amerson's conviction and did not offer any additional evidence to support it.
In late January, Superior Court Judge C. Winston Gilchrist notified both parties that he would overturn Amerson's conviction. On February 16, he granted Coleman’s Motion for Appropriate Relief, officially vacating Amerson’s conviction and sentence in Sharita Rivera’s death. But Amerson’s freedom was delayed nearly a month longer until the state's dismissal was finally signed by Matthews, district attorney for the 12th prosecutorial district that includes Harnett and Lee counties.
“This case illustrates the troubling indifference of prosecutors, including the North Carolina Attorney General, who refuse to address the facts of these cases while blindly defending indefensible conduct by state actors, sometimes for decades, as in Quincy’s case,” Coleman said.
“Until the public demands more from these elected officials, innocent people will continue to languish in North Carolina prisons solely because the men and women who have the power to free them are indifferent to miscarriages of justice. That is what urgently needs to change.”
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Luke Mears '24 called the outcome "25 years too long" to achieve: "To steal so much of someone’s life purposelessly and without evidence is just heartbreaking, but we are, of course, happy and relieved with the result," Mears said.
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"We are incredibly grateful to Quincy, his family, and his friends for their patience and support as we navigated the frustrations of this case. I will keep this entire experience with me throughout my legal career — both the realities of the legal field and the indifference some people have, but also the lessons learned from having such an incredible mentor in Professor Coleman and working with such incredible people."
Becker, now counsel at KPMG where he conducts internal investigations for a large company, said seeing the consequences of the mistakes in Amerson's case has had a profound impact on his work.
“I’m acutely aware that I am susceptible, like anyone else, to making a mistake or missing something,” Becker said. “I hope that that awareness, which I owe in large part to my work on this case where mistakes in the investigation led to a tragic result, makes me better at what I do.”
The entire release can be read at:
https://law.duke.edu/news/wrongful-convictions-clinic-secures-11th-exoneration-quincy-amerson-free-after-23-years
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/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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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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MORE VALUABLE WORDS: "As a former public defender, Texas' refusal to delay Ivan Cantu's execution to evaluate new evidence is deeply worrying for the state of our legal system. There should be no room for doubt in a death penalty case. The facts surrounding Cantu's execution should haunt all of us."
