‘That’s why we have clemency,’ says legislator on calls for governor to free Ronnie Long
As Ronnie Long awaits a court decision that could overturn his 1976 rape conviction, a growing number of supporters are urging Gov. Roy Cooper to make good on his promises for racial justice and free Long now.
On July 28, 16 N.C. legislators, including two from Charlotte-Mecklenburg, urged the governor to commute what remains of Long’s 80-year sentence. The letter cites police misconduct during the investigation and Long’s trial along with a spread of COVID-19 in Long’s prison.
On July 31, a group of clergy, including the Rev. William J. Barber and state NAACP President the Rev. Anthony Spearman, urged Cooper to intervene in what the group described “as a case of devastating injustice and oppression.”
Meanwhile, a Change.org petition started by Long’s wife, Ashleigh Long, a former criminal-justice student at UNC Charlotte, had drawn almost 37,000 signatures as of Friday.
Cooper, however, who is locked in a re-election campaign as his state deals with a raging pandemic, has not commented on the case. The office of Attorney General Josh Stein continues to defend Long’s conviction.
Both men were center stage in promising statewide criminal justice reforms in the wake of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In recent weeks, Long’s attorneys say they’ve heard nothing from Cooper’s office on their requests to get Long out of prison. They say they also have contacted Cooper’s clemency office, “but it does not respond,” said Jamie Lau, supervising attorney for the Duke Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic who heads Long’s defense team.
As it stands now, Cooper, a Democrat, could become the first N.C. governor in 40 years to complete a full term without granting clemency in a single case.
Duke law professor Jim Coleman, co-director of the university’s wrongful convictions clinic, says Cooper and Stein appear “almost scared politically to get involved in criminal justice issues that might be controversial.”
“If you look at the Ronnie Long case, with all the government misconduct, all the evidence pointing toward a different suspect, yet they are unwilling to look into the case, let alone take any action,” Coleman, a Charlotte native, told the Observer.
“If you have a governor or an attorney general or a DA who are indifferent to the possibility that there has been a miscarriage of justice, it does not matter what you do. There’s going to be a roadblock. We don’t have people who actually care whether they got it right.”
In June, in the midst of the statewide protects over Floyd’s death, Cooper announced the creation of the North Carolina Task Force on Racial Equity and Criminal Justice, which the governor promised would “help eliminate systemic racism in our criminal justice system.”
Cooper picked Stein to help lead it. “For way too long, black people have not been treated equitably in the United States. We have to fix that,” Stein said at the time.
Asked to comment about Long’s case Friday, Cooper’s office offered less aspirational words.
“The administration reviews requests for clemency, and this case is awaiting a decision from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. I do not have new information to share,” press secretary Dory MacMillian said in an email to the Observer.
Stein spokeswoman Laura Brewer said Friday that the attorney general “is committed to pursuing justice in all his work – that’s true of the Task Force’s work and in individual cases.”
‘The perfect case’
Long, 20 at the time of his arrest, was convicted of raping the wife of a Cannon Mills executive. Despite no direct evidence tying him to the crime, Long was convicted by an all-white jury selected after the sheriff at the time tampered with the jury pool.
Other examples of police and prosecutor misconduct have clouded the rape investigation and the legitimacy of Long’s trial.
Close to a dozen pieces of evidence tested by the State Bureau of Investigation — evidence that could have weakened the prosecution’s case — were never disclosed to Long’s attorneys or the jury, court documents show.
As recently as 2015, Long’s attorneys learned of 43 fingerprints police collected from the rape scene but never shared. None of the prints matched Long’s.
Semen samples taken from the victim also were never disclosed to the defense and later disappeared.
During a May hearing before the Fourth Circuit on Long’s request for a new trial, a majority of the judges who spoke appeared skeptical of the assertion by Stein assistant Phillip Rubin that the government misconduct would not have changed the verdict.
“Prosecutors clearly had evidence that any defense counsel in the world, not only in 1976 but (in) the history of this country, would have wanted or needed and which should have been supplied. And yet, we did not provide it,” Appeals Court Judge James Wynn, who is Black and grew up in eastern North Carolina, said in one of the hearing’s most dramatic moments.
“What is it about us that we want to prosecute and keep people in jail when we know evidence may exist that might lead to a different conclusion? Why is that so offensive to us now that we want to ... protect (illegal) activity from 44 years ago?
“...When did justice leave the process so we let our rules blind us to what we all can see?”
The court’s decision on Long’s request for a new trial could come is expected this summer.
State Rep. Marcia Morey, a Durham Democrat, urged Cooper to not wait for the judges. She said Long has already served 14 years longer than the punishment he would receive if convicted of the same charges today.
“Everything added together — the sentence he’s already served, the problems with his trial, the COVID in his prison — all leads to the fact that he deserves and is entitled to a clemency consideration by the governor.
“... It’s the perfect case. That’s why we have clemency.”
Coleman said he remains dubious, accusing Cooper and Stein of making an election-year calculation “not to do anything that might lose any white middle-of-the-road votes.”
“Actually, waiting on the Fourth Circuit to rule is not an illegitimate position,” Coleman said.
“But it’s also happens to be a convenient excuse to do nothing ... There’s is no reason to wait.”
This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 11:33 AM.
