NCPLS lawyers prove innocence of man wrongfully incarcerated for over 30 years
James Blackmon, who spent more than three decades in prison for the 1979 murder of a Raleigh college student, went free Thursday with all charges dismissed. A three-judge panel declared Blackmon, who is 66 and uses a wheelchair, innocent after a three-day hearing in Wake County Superior Court.
His lawyers attacked the only piece of evidence in his case: a confession he gave while he was a mentally ill patient at Dorothea Dix Hospital. As the decision was read, he nodded and smiled. “Justice delayed is better than no justice at all,” said Jonathan Broun, Blackmon’s lawyer with N.C. Prisoner Legal Service.
“There’s a problem with how the criminal justice system deals with mentally ill people. It was a problem in the 1980s ... I am concerned that some problems would be repeated.”
The 1988 conviction stemmed from a slaying at what was then St. Augustine’s College, where student Helena Payton was stabbed to death in the bathroom of her dormitory, Latham Hall. It went unsolved for several years until Raleigh police received a confidential tip that a patient at Dix had been talking about killing women, particularly the St. Augustine’s student.
