The NC Senate’s 2025-27 budget cuts North Carolina’s Innocence Inquiry Commission, which has an annual budget of $1.6 million. Over the years, that investment has resulted in the exoneration of 16 men who lost decades of their lives to incarceration for crimes they did not commit.
First in the Nation
Imagine spending years or decades in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. Deprived of your freedom, not knowing whether you will ever go home again, and missing your children’s graduations, weddings, births, and the funerals of loved ones. This is to say nothing of the emotional and financial burden on your family.
In 2002, then-Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake, Jr. launched a study group of criminal justice stakeholders. That group recognized that the standard process for obtaining judicial relief for wrongful conviction was hampered by the volume of non-innocence post-conviction claims, procedural bars that prevented valid claims from being heard, and the impossibility for defense attorneys to get full access to material files and evidence. It also considered the tragic examples of wrongful conviction, like Darryl Hunt, that took years to correct because the State was blind to justice and fought to keep an innocent person in prison.
Something that still happens today, at a very high cost.
The Innocence Inquiry Commission, which does not represent claimants, was created by statute in 2006 as the first neutral state agency in the country with the authority to review and investigate credible claims of factual innocence. Many of those cases were originally investigated decades ago, before changes in law enforcement practices and advancements in scientific evidence.
The commission has broad statutory authority to access evidence and witnesses to overcome obstacles in post-conviction relief. That same need and obstacles exist today, which raises the question of why the commission would be eliminated without first addressing those obstacles.
Reliability of Convictions
Lake’s study commission championed important legislation that put NC on the map as a leader in criminal justice reforms that increase the reliability of convictions without impacting the conviction of the guilty. Those reforms included standardized eyewitness identification procedures, recording of interrogations, and improvements to the preservation of biological evidence statutes, including mandated preservation of untested rape kits.
Without Lake’s leadership, reliability of convictions would not have increased over the years and the stories about decades old rapes being solved would not have been possible. There’s still more work to do, and there hasn’t been a leader to lead that work since Lake retired in 2006. Still, maybe the fact that his study commission championed such beneficial and well-thought-out reforms should be considered before the Innocence Inquiry Commission and Justice Lake’s legacy is destroyed without informed discussion.
Critics of the commission have said nonprofits like the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence should be responsible for investigating these cases. The center relies on grants and donations. The constitutionally guaranteed right to due process and the essential need for truth in justice should not rely on charity.
The Costs
The men exonerated by the commission’s work lost 300 years in prison, at a cost of $16.2 million. That does not take into account the cost of having the actual perpetrators on the streets committing more crimes while those men languished in prison for crimes they did not commit.
It also doesn’t consider the cost of misled investigations, trials to convict the wrong person, appeals, costly State challenges opposing release, and crime victim trauma. Putting aside all the justice and public confidence reasons to keep the commission, a complete analysis of the numbers, which should be looked at when determining a budget, indicates that the commission should be kept, and its budget increased. In addition to keeping the commission, NC should consider how our innocent citizens are convicted and invest in ways to increase the reliability of convictions instead of denying they happen and fighting against correcting our errors.
