Free at last

Jet, April 21, 2008

Glenn Edward Chapman (c) celebrates with his attorneys, Jessica Leaven and Frank Goldsmith, in Raleigh, NC, as they announce that after 14 years on death row, Chapman's murder convictions were thrown out because investigators withheld evidence. Chapman, now 40 and a free man, was convicted on two counts of murder in the 1992 deaths of Betty Ramseur and Tenene Conley and sentenced to die in 1994. Though Chapman admitted knowing the women, he denied involvement in their deaths. Last year, Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin ruled that Chapman was offered ineffective assistance from his original attorneys and that evidence was lost, destroyed or withheld. As a result, he was granted a new trial. The district attorney's office recently decided to dismiss the charges, noting the prosecution's case was "factually incomplete" and there was not enough evidence to try Chapman again.

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