Darryl Howard, wrongfully convicted of Durham double murder, pardoned by Gov. Cooper
Darryl Howard spent nearly 25 years in prison for two murders in Durham that he didn’t commit. Now he will be able to get some restitution for those wasted decades.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, pardoned Howard on Friday. He has already been out of prison for five years, having been exonerated and set free in 2016 due to the efforts of lawyers from the Innocence Project.
“It is important to continue our efforts to reform the justice system and to acknowledge wrongful convictions,” Cooper said Friday. “After carefully reviewing Darryl Anthony Howard’s case, I am granting him this Pardon of Innocence.”
Two different Durham district attorneys who have since left office in disgrace, Mike Nifong and Tracey Cline, had a hand in Howard’s wrongful prosecution, The News & Observer reported in 2016.
Nifong withheld evidence that someone else’s DNA was at the crime scene, The N&O reported, and Cline “told police there was no need to do an investigation into the DNA match” that linked the DNA evidence to a different man, not Howard, who had since been imprisoned in Tennessee.
With those indications that Howard’s rights had been violated and that he was unlikely the real culprit, a judge ordered Howard to be set free. The N&O reported at the time that he said he just wanted to spend time with his grandkids, in person for the first time ever.
“There’s no time to be angry,” he said. “I’m thankful this is over.”
But because of a 2012 law, The N&O previously reported, former prisoners who have been exonerated aren’t eligible for payments from the state — unless they are also pardoned by the governor.
Pardons are rare in North Carolina. Former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory pardoned 10 people during his four years as governor, and Howard is Cooper’s sixth pardon.
That 2012 law was passed shortly after an Asheville man, Kenneth Kagonyera, was exonerated and released from prison for a murder that sheriff’s deputies there pressured him into pleading guilty to — by ignoring and possibly destroying real evidence, and also faking evidence that they claimed implicated him, the News & Observer reported last year.
“A key piece of video footage that may have shown the real killers was mysteriously taped over while in police custody,” The N&O reported. “And law enforcement refused to release DNA evidence that Kagonyera claimed would’ve proven his innocence — and which would later do just that.”
Kagonyera was pardoned by Cooper in December along with three others wrongfully implicated in the same murder, which a different person later confessed to.
In addition to those four pardons last December for that Asheville murder case, Cooper also pardoned Ronnie Long, who has since received $750,000 in restitution. He spent 44 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit. Long was convicted after a Concord police officer lied on the stand, and evidence that might have proved his innocence went missing.
State law caps restitution payments at no more than $750,000, but the 65-year-old Long has said he deserves more for spending almost his entire life in prison as an innocent man.
“Fair? What’s fair?,” Long told The Charlotte Observer earlier this month. “Ask yourself that question when these people took away your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s and they started in on your 60s.”
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This story was originally published April 30, 2021 at 5:27 PM with the headline "Darryl Howard, wrongfully convicted of Durham double murder, pardoned by Gov. Cooper."
