Sheffron, Lee & Associates

Dwayne Allen Dail

Convicted 1989 - Sentence Life in Prison

Overturned 2007  - Served 18+ years

Real Perpretrator Found.

On September 4, 1987, a man crawled through the window of a Goldsboro, North Carolina, apartment and raped a 12-year-old girl living there. The girl identified Dwayne Allen Dail as her attacker and he was charged with burglary, rape and other related charged. Hairs collected from the crime scene were submitted for forensic testing and an expert found that Dail’s hairs were microscopically consistent with the evidence from the crime. He served 18 years in North Carolina prisons for a 1987 rape before DNA testing on crime scene evidence proved his innocence. He was released from prison in 2007 after serving nearly half his life behind bars.

Dail reportedly turned down an offer to plead guilty in exchange for three years of probation, and he went to trial in 1989. A jury heard that the victim had identified Dail as her attacker and also that forensic testing had shown the possibility that the hairs at the crime scene had come from him. The jury found him guilty as charged and he was sentenced to two terms of life.

Dail filed numerous appeals over the years, and the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence began working on his case in 2001. Attorneys at the center requested testing on evidence from Dail’s case, but were told that all evidence introduced at Dail’s trial was returned to the Goldsboro Police Department and subsequently destroyed. However, when they asked for a repeated search, officers found evidence, including the victim’s nightgown, that had been saved.

Officials at the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office agreed to send the evidence for DNA testing, and semen was discovered on the victim’s nightgown. DNA profile from the semen did not match Dail, proving he was not the man who attacked the victim in 1987.

Dwayne Dail was released from custody on August 28, 2007, after a state court judge agreed to vacate his conviction and dismiss all chares against him. He was 39 when released and had served 18 years in prison. In October 2007 Dail received a pardon from Gov. Mike Easley based on his actual innocence.

Darryl Hunt

Conviction 1989 - Life in Prison

Overturned 2007 -  Served 18+ years

Real Perpretrator Found

Although DNA results proved his innocence in 1994, it still took 10 years of legal appeals to exonerate him.


In the early morning hours of August 10, 1984, Deborah Sykes, a 25-year-old copy editor at a local newspaper, was raped and murdered on the outskirts of Winston-Salem, NC. Sykes had been on her way to work; she was stabbed 16 times. She was found naked from the waist down and tests revealed that there was semen on her body, indicating that she had been raped.

The Investigation and Identification a man called 911 that morning to report an attack and identified himself as Sammy Mitchell. When police talked to Sammy Mitchell the next day, they also spoke with Hunt, who was Mitchell's friend. Mitchell told police he hadn't called 911 that night. Another man, Johnny Gray, eventually told police he had made the call.

A local man came forward and told police he had seen Sykes with an African-American man on the morning of the crime. When that man described a person who matched Darryl Hunt's description, police arranged a photo lineup. The witness tentatively identified Hunt as the man he had seen with Sykes.

Johnny Gray had identified a different man (who was in jail on the day of the crime) in a first photo lineup, but after Hunt had been identified as a suspect, Gray identified him as well.

After this, Hunt's girlfriend was arrested on outstanding larceny charges. She initially told police that she was with Hunt on the night of the crime and that he couldn't have done it. Now, under arrest, she told police that Hunt had admitted to her that he committed the crime. She recanted before trial, but prosecutors presented her statements to the jury nonetheless.

Hunt was tried for first-degree murder in the Sykes case. Eyewitnesses brought forth by the prosecution testified that they had seen Hunt with the victim before the crime or that they had seen Hunt enter a local hotel and leave bloody towels behind in the restroom. Hunt testified on his own behalf that he didn’t know the victim and had nothing to do with the crime. The jury deliberated for three days. They convicted Hunt and he was sentenced to life in prison.

On appeal, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the conviction because prosecutors had introduced Hunt's girlfriend's statements after she had recanted them. Hunt was released on bond in 1989. With the trial pending, Prosecutors offered Hunt a plea bargain – he could be freed and sentenced to time already served (five years) in exchange for a guilty plea. Hunt rejected the offer and faced a second trial.

He was retried in rural Catawba County before an all-white jury. The main eyewitnesses from the first trial testified again, and two jailhouses snitches testified that Hunt had admitted guilt to them while in prison. The jury deliberated for two hours and convicted Hunt of first-degree murder. Again, he was sentenced to life in prison. He had been free for 11 months.

Hunt's original trial attorney, Mark Rabil, worked on the case for nearly 20 years. After the second conviction, in which Rabil was part of a larger defense team, Rabil and another attorney, Ben Dowling-Sendor, filed for DNA testing in the case. In October 1994, DNA results came back. Hunt's DNA did not match the semen found on the victim's body at the crime scene. Despite the results, however, Hunt's appeals were rejected. Judges found that the new evidence did not prove innocence. Repeated appeals met the same fate.

Finally, in 2004, 19 years after Hunt was convicted and 10 years after he was first excluded by DNA, the DNA profile from the crime scene was run in the state database, at the request of Hunt's attorneys. The results matched a man incarcerated for another murder. Hunt was exonerated and freed in 2005.

Willard E. Brown, the man whose DNA matched the profile at the crime scene, has since pleaded guilty to the murder of Deborah Sykes.

Ronald Cotton

Convicted 1985, 1987 - Sentence Life if Prison

Overturned 1995 - Served 10+ years

Real Perpetrator found.

Twice in July 1984, an assailant broke into an apartment, severed phone wires, sexually assaulted a woman, searched through her belongings, and took money and other items. On August 1, 1984, Ronald Cotton was arrested for these crimes. In January 1985, Cotton was convicted by a jury of one count of rape and one count of burglary. In a second trial, in November 1987, Cotton was convicted of both rapes and two counts of burglary. An Alamance County Superior Court sentenced Cotton to life plus fifty-four years.

The prosecutor's evidence at trial included a photo identification made by one of the victims, a police lineup identification made by one of the victims, a flashlight found in Cotton's home that resembled the one used by the assailant, and rubber from his shoe that was consistent with rubber found at crime scene.

On appeal, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the 1985 conviction because the second victim had picked another man out of the lineup and the trial court had not allowed this evidence to be heard by the jury. In November 1987, Cotton was retried, this time for both rapes because the second victim decided that Cotton was her assailant. Before the second trial, a man in prison, who had been convicted for similar crimes, told another inmate that he had committed the crimes for which Cotton had been convicted. A superior court judge refused to allow this information into evidence, and Cotton was convicted of both rapes. The next year, Cotton's appellate defender filed a brief but did not argue the failure to admit the second suspect's confession, and the conviction was affirmed.

In 1994, the chief appellate defender requested that two new lawyers take over Cotton's defense. They filed a motion for appropriate relief on the grounds of inadequate appeal counsel. They also filed a motion for DNA testing that was granted in October 1994. The Burlington Police Department turned over all evidence that contained the assailant's semen for DNA testing.

The samples from one victim were too deteriorated to be conclusive, but the samples from the other victim's vaginal swab and underwear were subjected to PCR based DNA testing and showed no match to Cotton. At the defense's request, the results were sent to the SBI's DNA database. The state's database showed a match with the convict who had earlier confessed to the crime.

When the DNA test results were reported in May 1995, the district attorney and the defense motioned to dismiss all charges. On June 30, 1995, Cotton was officially cleared of all charges and released from prison. Arising from this case is the incredible story of Jennifer Thompson, the victim who had identified Cotton. An aspiring college student at the time of the crime, she made it her purpose to study the assailant's face so that he would be brought to justice. She identified the wrong man. Today, Ms. Thompson speaks out about the dangers of relying solely upon single eyewitness testimony to convict.

Leo Waters

Conviction 1982 - Life in Prison

Overturned 2003 - Served 21+ years

Real Perpretrator Found

In 1982, Leo Waters was convicted of rape, sexual offense, and robbery with a dangerous weapon. On November 20, 2003, the State of North Carolina dismissed all charges against him after DNA testing proved that he was not the perpetrator of the crimes.

The victim in this case had advertised a waterbed for sale in a Jacksonville, North Carolina, newspaper. On March 31, 1981, a man called at about 9:00AM and expressed interest in looking at the bed. He arrived at the victim’s house over an hour later and looked at the bed. They went first to the basement to look at part of the bed and then upstairs to look at the rest of the bed. When the victim entered the bedroom and turned around, the man pulled out a gun and threatened to kill her. He taped her hands behind her back, taped her eyes shut, gagged her with her underwear, and tied her feet together. He vaginally raped her and wiped her off with a towel. He then stole some jewelry and left.

The victim gave police a full description and viewed numerous photographic arrays. She was hypnotized in April 1981 in an attempt to bolster her memory of what the perpetrator looked like and details about the car he drove. She picked Leo Waters from the third array that the police showed her in August 1981. Waters had been arrested on minor unrelated charges. The photograph showed Waters’s head and shoulders. The victim said she could not be sure of her identification unless she could see the person’s full body. She viewed Waters at the courthouse days later and positively identified him.

Spermatozoa were found on items in the rape kit collected from the victim, including the vaginal swab. Serological testing revealed blood type antigens consistent with type O blood. Both Waters and the victim were type O. The victim’s husband was type A. The laboratory performed further serological testing for other blood group markers and was able to narrow down the population fo potential donors of the semen to 35.5 percent of the adult white male population. Waters could not be excluded from this population.

Attorney Mark Raynor took on the Waters case in February 2002. Waters had already applied for postconviction DNA testing on his own. Access to the evidence was secured and STR DNA testing was performed by Laboratory Corporation of America in January 2003. Waters was excluded as a potential contributor of the spermatozoa. He was granted a new trial and was released from prison. Raynor filed and application for a Pardon of Innocence with the governor’s office.

In October 2003, The district attorney submitted the evidence for replicate testing at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation Laboratory. The results of STR DNA testing confirmed the initial results: Waters could not have been the rapist.