The Assembly reports Charles McNeair to be released from prison
Charles McNeair Spent His Adult Life in Prison. At 63, He’ll Go Home.
With the support of his hometown and the police chief, a man imprisoned as a teenager for a crime he has maintained he didn’t commit has finally been granted parole.
After 46 years in prison, Charles Anthony McNeair is finally coming home to Lexington.
On April 23, McNeair, now 63, learned that the N.C. Post Release Supervision and Parole Commission had granted him parole. He is set to be released on Sunday.
It was a long time coming. In January, McNeair had his 30th parole hearing. All 29 previous requests had been denied, even as questions about his original conviction mounted.
“I’m just thrilled that he will have an opportunity to be reunited with his family,” said Jamie Lau, a supervising attorney for the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at Duke University School of Law who has represented McNeair.
As The Assembly previously reported, McNeair, who is Black, was just 16 when Lexington police officers arrested him on charges that he broke into a white woman’s home and raped her while holding a claw hammer and a screwdriver. McNeair maintained his innocence, even as police linked him to four other attacks on white women without any clear evidence.
The court-appointed attorney in his initial case gave him a stark choice: He could either plead guilty to second-degree rape and breaking and entering and be sentenced to life in prison, or risk a conviction at trial and possibly get the death penalty–even though North Carolina had stopped executing people for rape at that time. McNeair took the plea deal, believing it was his only option. He has been in prison ever since.
A defendant convicted on the same charges today would likely face a maximum of 10 years in prison.
For decades, McNeair’s family, including his mother, fought to get him out of prison and clear his name. But there were few avenues for challenging the convictions. McNeair pleaded guilty, and police didn’t appear to have much physical evidence when they charged him, meaning there was little that could be tested for DNA as that technology advanced.
In September 2022, Lau filed a clemency petition with the Juvenile Sentence Review Board that former Gov. Roy Cooper established the previous year. The petition seemed like McNeair’s only chance at freedom.
A coalition of Lexington residents formed to lobby Cooper to grant clemency. The Lexington City Council passed a resolution supporting the petition in 2023, and last year, Lexington Police Chief Robby Rummage wrote a letter asking current Gov. Josh Stein to seriously consider granting McNeair clemency.
The chief wrote that he had helped convict murderers who had since been released while McNeair remained in prison. He noted that his department no longer had the investigative file from the 1979 case.
“What remains is a troubling gap: We have no documentation of the investigation that led to Mr. McNeair’s life sentence,” Rummage wrote. “The limited materials we do have do not present a coherent narrative and do not pertain to the offense in question.”
Rummage said Tuesday that he is happy that McNeair is being released.
“I feel the right decision was made,” he said.
Stein has not taken action on the clemency petition, and his office has previously declined to comment. The request is moot now that McNeair has received parole. Wanda Cox, a former showroom and interior designer who has emerged as McNeair’s fiercest advocate, said she is thrilled, and McNeair is thankful for Lau’s work and all of the support he has gotten from the community.
“Charles has always deserved freedom,” she said. “He spent his entire life in an environment that would break most of us…We’re grateful that the parole board has made the decision to free him and I hope that they continue reviewing cases for others in a timely manner going forward.”
