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| Former N.C. death row inmate's suit claims civil rights violated |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/09/2005 |
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Alan Gell, who was sentenced to death when prosecutors withheld evidence in his murder trial, last Monday sued five state prosecutors and investigators in federal court, charging that they violated his civil rights. Gell claims the violations occured when those named in the suit withheld helpful evidence from him at his 1998 trial. "Gell's ordeal was not an accident," the complaint says. "It resulted from the concerted effort of veteran law enforcement officers of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation ... as well as prosecutors from the elite Special Prosecutions Unit of the North Carolina Attorney General's office." Gell spent nine years behind bars, half on death row, for the 1995 murder of Allen Ray Jenkins, a retired truck driver in the small town of Aulander in Bertie County. He was acquitted at a new trial in December 2002 that allowed the withheld evidence: statements of people who saw Jenkins alive after Gell had been jailed, and a taped conversation of the star witness saying she had to "make up a story" for police. A Bertie County jury quickly acquitted Gell at a trial in February 2004. "To this day, no one from the state has apologized or made any amends for what was done to me," Gell said Monday. "Maybe I'll find out who abused their powers. Right now everyone is standing in a circle and pointing their fingers at each other." The lawsuit names SBI agent Dwight Ransome; former Aulander Police Chief Gordon Godwin; David Hoke and Debra Graves, former prosecutors in the Attorney General's Office; and William Ferrell, Hoke and Graves' supervisor at the time. The complaint charges that Hoke, Graves, Ransome and Godwin acted together to ensure Gell's false arrest, unfair trial and wrongful conviction by ignoring a judge's order to give Gell's attorneys witness statements that pointed to Gell's innocence. It alleges that the four ignored evidence that didn't fit their case and fabricated evidence when Ransome and Godwin re-interviewed eight other witnesses who had seen the victim alive while Gell was in jail. "Ransome's and Godwin's primary goal in these 'reinterviews' was not legitimate investigation to determine the truth, but rather to 'undo' the witnesses' initial exculpatory statements and to replace them with false statements and/or memories that would be consistent with the prosecution's theory against Gell," the complaint said. Gell has not requested a pardon from Gov. Mike Easley, who was attorney general when his office prosecuted Gell. Gell has retained an aggressive legal team to press his case. David Rudolf of Chapel Hill is most recently known for his defense of Durham novelist Mike Peterson, who was convicted of murder. Barry Scheck is a founder of the Innocence Project in New York City and was one of O.J. Simpson's defense attorneys. None of the defendants could be reached for comment last Monday afternoon. Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper, said her office had not yet seen the complaint and could not comment. |
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