noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646
DURHAM -- For nearly three years, students at Duke University's Wrongful Convictions Clinic worked on the case of Shawn Massey. That's less than a quarter of the time Massey spent in prison for crimes he didn't commit.
But that work -- which clinic co-director James Coleman calls "unraveling threads to help unravel a case" -- ultimately proved fruitful. Earlier this month, Massey -- after having served 12 years for second-degree kidnapping, felonious breaking and entering and robbery with a dangerous weapon -- was freed, his conviction vacated, thanks to the slow, meticulous work of the Duke clinic.
The 12 years "seemed like forever to me," Massey said Tuesday at a news conference with clinic directors and students at the Duke Law School. "I was done wrong by the justice system and I struggle with that daily. I will struggle with it for the rest of my life."
Speaking publicly about his exoneration for the first time, Massey said he remains angry about his wrongful conviction.
"I'm mad, I'm upset," he said in a classroom filled with members of his family and Duke law students. "I want somebody to go to jail [for this]. I want them to apologize. I might accept the apology, but then again, I might not."
Massey, now 37, was arrested in Charlotte in 1998 after allegedly forcing a woman and her two young children into their apartment at gunpoint and robbing them. The jury convicted him of all charges and the judge sentenced him to a maximum of 133 months for the armed robbery and a maximum of 50 months for the kidnapping and breaking and entering charges.
The clinic took up the case through the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence. Three teams of students, working with other students, alumni and friends, built an argument that Massey was a victim of erroneous eyewitness identification. His exoneration is the first one attributable to the clinic.
The case turned on the students proving that Massey, at the time of the crime, had short hair, not long hair styled in corn rows as the victim described.
"We had to teach people about corn rows," said Theresa Newman, the other co-director of the clinic. "We're saying corn rows and they're thinking braids. They didn't understand that you need very long hair for corn rows, and Shawn's hair was never long."
Kimberly Kisabeth, a 2007 Duke law graduate and one of the students most involved in the case, called Massey in prison this month to tell him he would be released.
"This has been a long time coming and I think he was speechless," Kisabeth said.
Thursday, Massey was more talkative.
He talked about missing the years his son was growing up and missing the death of his mother. He talked about not being able to hear his grandmother, a reverend, preach on Sunday.
Most of all, he talked about what Coleman called a miscarriage of justice.
"There needs to be watchdog groups," Massey said. "I'm going to work toward that. We need them because if they'll do it to me, they'll do it to somebody else."
