Seventeen years ago, Lamont McKoy, then 19, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Myron Hailey in Fayetteville-a crime McKoy maintains he did not commit.
The state of North Carolina insists it got the right man, but evidence revealed at a 1995 federal drug trial points to McKoy's innocence.
During the trial, witnesses testified that a different man shot Hailey.
Based on the new evidence, McKoy appealed his case in Cumberland County Superior Court, which rejected the appeal in 2001.
After this rebuff-and two other failed appeals-few legal avenues now remain open to McKoy.
But he still has hope. A team of Duke law students is investigating his case in an attempt to prove his innocence.
"The whole purpose of what we're doing is to get all the information in front of us," said second-year law student Josh Schmidt, who is investigating the case along with fellow second-year Mike Watsula. "Our stance throughout the whole process is that we believe him to be innocent."
In December 2001, McKoy mailed a request to the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence for help. The center assigned the case to the Duke Innocence Project, where teams of law students have been investigating his case ever since.
The Duke Innocence Project
When the Innocence Project receives a case, students spend an average of 50 to 60 hours reviewing documents to determine if the case merits additional investigation, said second-year law student Jeff Ward, student director of the project.
If the students believe an individual is innocent, the case goes on to a second stage of investigation, in which a team of two to four law students attempts to uncover new information by interviewing people related to the case and searching for additional documents.
"Many of the more promising cases have received hundreds and probably thousands of hours of cumulative student work," Ward said. "This involves students who give up their spring breaks to go travel to eastern and western parts of North Carolina to interview people, to talk to police departments, to really dig into the investigation."
The students investigating McKoy's case are nearing the end of the process and are now compiling the information they have gathered into "something that's readable," Watsula said.
"We've accumulated all the information that we could possibly get about this case," he said. "We have our theory of the case; we know what we think happened."
The murder
On Jan. 25, 1990, McKoy-who has acknowledged that he dealt drugs-got into a dispute with Hailey after Hailey purchased fake crack cocaine from him, according to testimony by Bobby Williams, a witness for the prosecution.
Williams, who is now dead, testified that he saw McKoy fire twice at the rear of Hailey's blue Honda Accord as Hailey was driving away. The next day, Hailey was found dead in his wrecked car. It was determined that he died of a bullet wound and not from the crash.
McKoy was not arrested until March 1990, after he allegedly confessed to the killing during a police interrogation.
He later denied confessing. Innocence Project investigators do not plan to pursue the issue of McKoy's confession, Watsula said.
But they question the accuracy of Williams' testimony. He was the only witness linking McKoy to the shooting.
"It was really just incredibly confusing testimony," Watsula said. "He would say someone was at this corner and then five minutes later someone was at the opposite corner.
"I've sat down with Google Earth open, with pictures of the areas, reading the testimony over and over and over again, and I can't make heads or tails of what he's trying to say."
Additionally, Williams' wife signed an affidavit saying that he told her he testified falsely during the trial, Schmidt said.
No physical evidence linking McKoy to Hailey's murder has ever been found, said School of Law Dean Theresa Newman, who is supervising the work on McKoy's case. She is also president of the Center on Actual Innocence.
The federal case
Additional evidence of McKoy's innocence emerged during the 1995 trial, which involved several Fayetteville drug dealers, Innocence Project investigators said.
During the trial, three witnesses testified that defendant William Talley was responsible for Hailey's murder, Schmidt said.
"The prosecution put on witnesses who said they saw [Talley] shoot at a car after a drug deal gone bad," Watsula said. "The morning after, they saw that same car crashed down the embankment where Myron Hailey's car was found. Another eyewitness, in a sworn affidavit, stated that the car shot at by Talley that night was Myron Hailey's blue Honda Accord."
Based on the new evidence, McKoy appealed his conviction, but his appeal was denied because the judge misunderstood the evidence presented, Newman said.
The next step?
After the failure of the appeal and a subsequent related one, few legal options remain for McKoy.
One option is to get his case considered by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, which has the power to vacate his conviction.
However, the commission is not currently accepting cases because of a backlog, Schmidt said.
The Innocence Project is also attempting to involve state Attorney General Roy Cooper, Newman said. She wrote him a letter in late February requesting that he review the case, but had received no response as of March 18.
Cooper and the Innocence Inquiry Commission both have subpoena power to obtain the records of the Cumberland County district attorney, who prosecuted the case.
The district attorney's office has denied several requests for these records, which might contain new information about the case, Newman said.
Cumberland County District Attorney Ed Grannis did not respond to messages requesting comment for this article.
Meanwhile, Innocence Project members are troubled that McKoy remains in prison despite the apparent strength of the evidence pointing to his innocence.
"This is one of those cases where the overwhelming amount of doubt in the case causes all of us to have nightmares about that man sitting in jail for something that he did not do," Ward said.
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