Why is a Man Serving Life for a Murder that Feds Say Someone Else Committed?

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/10/20/why-is-a-man-serving-life-for-a-murder-that-feds-say-someone-else-committed?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=opening-statement&utm_term=newsletter-20151019-297

It’s been nearly 25 years since 18-year-old Lamont McKoy was convicted for the murder of Myron Hailey in Fayetteville, North Carolina. But evidence — that was never introduced at trial — suggests McKoy never murdered anyone.

That didn’t stop the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which on Monday rejected, without comment, a request by McKoy’s attorneys to hold a hearing that would have addressed why this evidence was never revealed at trial. Or, for that matter, why it still is relevant today to help answer a basic question that has swirled around this case for decades: why is McKoy serving hard time, a life sentence, for a murder the feds later claimed was committed by another man?

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The primary witness against McKoy was a man named Bobby Lee “Strawberry” Williams, who testified that McKoy had shot Hailey in that car. But Williams later recanted his testimony and claimed that on two occasions, local authorities offered him money to incriminate McKoy.

McKoy’s current attorneys allege that the reason this evidence was not originally introduced to a jury is because police and prosecutors never disclosed it to McKoy’s trial attorney.

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The primary witness against McKoy was a man named Bobby Lee “Strawberry” Williams, who testified that McKoy had shot Hailey in that car. But Williams later recanted his testimony and claimed that on two occasions, local authorities offered him money to incriminate McKoy. There was no physical evidence linking McKoy to Hailey. The gun used in the murder was a .357 revolver. One prosecution witness told investigators that McKoy carried only a .22 handgun.

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McKoy was convicted in 1991. At the time, a joint local, state, and federal task force was operating in that area of North Carolina. They charged and prosecuted a man named William Correy Talley on drug-trafficking charges in 1995, four years after McKoy was convicted. Prosecutors argued during Talley’s trial and sentencing in federal court that they had proof that Talley, not McKoy, had killed Hailey.

Federal prosecutors specifically alleged that Talley was the one who had fired in Hailey’s car, in another Fayetteville neighborhood called Grove View Terrace. Like Haymount Hill, Grove View Terrace is about a mile up the road from where Hailey’s car and body were found. The feds presented two witnesses to support their case that Talley, not McKoy, had murdered Hailey. When Talley was arrested, he was carrying a .357 revolver.

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A task force comprised of local, state, and federal official arrested Talley. These officials were the very people who investigated and prosecuted McKoy; the detectives from the Fayetteville police department, for example, were on that task force and knew — or should have known — of McKoy’s conviction. It’s unclear why no one stepped forward to square the two contradictory versions of the murder.

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