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Abbitt is a free man: Exonerated by DNA after 14 years, he feels a bit lost
Journal Photo by Lauren Carroll
Joseph Abbitt is interviewed by media outside the jail after walking out a free man. A judge vacated his sentence, and he can now ask the governor for a pardon.
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Published: September 3, 2009
For the first time in 14 years, Joseph Lamont Abbitt is a free man.
He walked out of the Forsyth County Jail yesterday, surrounded by his family, after a judge set aside his conviction for raping two teenage sisters 18 years ago.
Now, at age 49, Abbitt faces the task of rebuilding his life.
"I'm just like a child now," he said.
Abbitt, the seventh person in North Carolina to be exonerated by DNA evidence, has only a few simple plans.
He wants to live in Winston-Salem with his brother, Thurmond Abbitt.
He wants to make up for lost time with his family.
Beyond that, he has few plans.
"I don't know what to do," he said.
Holding on to hope
At a hearing in Forsyth Superior Court yesterday, Judge A. Moses Massey vacated the life sentence that Abbitt was serving.
Abbitt was convicted on June 22, 1995, of two counts of first-degree rape, one count of first-degree burglary and two counts of first-degree kidnapping in the 1991 sexual assaults of a 16-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister.
The Forsyth County District Attorney's Office and the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence filed a motion to vacate the convictions against Abbitt after DNA evidence collected in the case was retested by the State Bureau of Investigation and LabCorp of Research Triangle Park.
The tests ruled out Abbitt as a suspect.
Abbitt told the court yesterday that he hopes that authorities catch the person who did it "because the two young ladies are still victims of this crime."
Abbitt's relatives sat along the third and fourth row of the courtroom. When Massey issued the order to vacate Abbitt's conviction, Thurmond Abbitt broke down in tears. In his hands were thank-you cards for Christine Mumma, the executive director of the innocence center, who worked on Abbitt's case.
Joseph Abbitt had a hard time believing that a judge would let him out, said James Abbitt, another one of Abbitt's brothers.
James Abbitt said he never doubted his brother.
"I believed him to this day," he said. "He maintained his innocence."
Road to healing
A lot of the evidence in the case was destroyed -- state law at the time of Abbitt's conviction did not require it to be saved -- but the Winston-Salem Police Department kept some items, including rape kits returned by the SBI in 1994.
Police Chief Scott Cunningham said that it has been a long-standing practice for the police department to keep evidence.
And changes in state law have made it mandatory to preserve evidence, especially biological evidence, in cases where it is likely to matter, such as rapes and murders, Mumma said.
Mumma and prosecutors said yesterday that this was a case of misidentification. Mumma has said that in 75 percent of the cases in which people were exonerated by DNA evidence, misidentification was a major factor.
Carol Turowski, who advises the Wake Forest University Innocence Project, agreed.
"It's sad," said Turowski, an adjunct professor at the university's law school. "It sort of reinforces the concept that identification procedures can be faulty and can lead to wrongful convictions."
The two victims weren't in the courtroom yesterday.
Assistant District Attorney David Hall said that the victims, now in their early 30s, were shocked when they learned that Abbitt wasn't their attacker.
Then they wanted to know if prosecutors knew who committed the crime. Hall said that police and prosecutors are searching for the man.
Prosecutors have asked Massey to sign an order to provide more money to do additional DNA testing to find out who the attacker was.
Jennifer Cannino said she knows what the victims might be feeling. In 1995, she found out that the man convicted of raping her in 1984, Ronald Cotton, was innocent.
"For me, I felt a lot of things -- shame, fear, grief, confusion," Cannino said. She said she didn't know whether Cotton would forgive her or whether he might want revenge.
He did forgive her and the two have become friends and have toured together, telling their story.
Cannino said that it is hard for victims to accept the fact that the person they thought attacked them didn't. In her case, she said, she had an easier time because prosecutors were open about the fact that they made a mistake.
Abbitt said he has prayed for the victims every day, and he doesn't blame them.
He said that his faith in God helped him get through the years he spent in prison.
Now that he has been exonerated, Abbitt can ask for a pardon from Gov. Bev Perdue. If she grants it, he will be eligible to receive $700,000 -- $50,000 for each year he spent in prison.
But he has a difficult road ahead, said Darryl Hunt, who was exonerated in 2004 on a murder charge after DNA evidence proved that another man was the killer.
Hunt and Abbitt spent time together at Piedmont Correctional Center, and Hunt now heads a nonprofit organization that assists former offenders and people who have been wrongfully convicted.
"He's going to need time with himself," Hunt said.
"Healing is a long process."
■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
■ Wesley Young can be reached at 727-7369 or at wyoung@wsjournal.com.
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