Joseph Sledge has maintained his innocence for the nearly 40 years he's been locked up.
For the same number of years, the physical evidence key to his exoneration remained locked up in what's known as Vault #1--the place in the Columbus County, N.C. Clerk of Courts office that holds evidence for old cases.
Still, Sledge carries no bitterness.
"When you're conscious of something you didn't do, you can live with yourself," Sledge told reporters in the minutes after walking away from the county jail. "It's between you and your maker. That's the reality of the matter."
On Friday, January 23, 2015, the 70-year-old North Carolina man was freed, exonerated of a 1976 double murder and rape in which newly tested DNA evidence proves he did not commit. The case may now be re-opened in hopes of finding out who killed Josephine and Aileen Davis, the 74 and 53-year-old mother and daughter who were brutally murdered in their Elizabethtown home.
A three-judge panel heard testimony and impact statements from the clerk who was present when the evidence was discovered, the Texas DNA expert who confirmed the crime scene evidence did not match up with Sledge, and a family member of the two women who lost their lives in a horrific way.
Chris Mumma, the defense attorney who has worked on Sledge's case for the past decade, held back anger in the courtroom during her closing argument.
"This has not been an easy battle," Mumma said once Sledge left the jail with his family. "I have to say my hope and faith has been shattered."
TESTIMONY
Friday's hearing reiterated facts a jury never heard in 1978 including how neither the fingerprints nor the bloody footprints nor the pubic hair found at the crime scene matched Joseph Sledge.
That jury only heard from two inmates who claimed Sledge had confessed to the killings. Those inmates would later split a $5,000 reward from the state for their testimony.
When Sledge was named a suspect in the case, he had escaped from prison where he was serving a sentence for larceny-stealing clothes. An inmate beat him up and tried to get away. As he traveled through Elizabethtown, the Davis women were being attacked.
In 1979, Sledge would request an appeal to the murder and rape convictions. He knew the real killer was on the streets.
That would be followed by more than two dozen motions for the state to take another look. Then in 2003, Sledge wrote them a handwritten letter asking someone to locate that physical evidence he knew would set him free. A series of similar court-ordered requests would follow from the state's Innocence Inquiry Commission, which took on Sledge's case in the mid-2000s.
Rita Batchelor, the Columbus County Clerk of Court, was one of the staff members who was tasked with finding the missing evidence requested. Time and time again, she said they searched to no avail. An "extensive search would have had to be done," Batchelor said.
"We just couldn't find anything," she testified. "I think there was just a lot of confusion as to who had what."
Everything changed on an August 2012 day when she and a colleague were cleaning out Vault #1. Only the high clerk had the combination to the lock, but the women were charged with cleaning it out for a move to the new county annex.
On a top shelf, in the very back, there was an envelope that belonged in Sledge's case box.
"She was up on the top of the ladder and she was pulling boxes and just different things out and she pulled out this envelope and it had his name," Batchelor testified. "And she said 'This is like in the Joseph Sledge (case) and she said 'This must be something... the hairs they were looking for."
That colleague instructed Batchelor to call the North Carolina Innocence Commission.
Just when Chris Mumma was about to give up and close the case that had no physical evidence to set her client free, the phone rang. Divine intervention is what she called the call from Batchelor.
DNA testing proved Joseph Sledge was not the killer.
