Governor pardons wrongfully convicted Wilson man who spent 43 years in prison

Charles Ray Finch was convicted and sentenced to death in 1976 for the killing of Richard Holloman during an attempted robbery of a Wilson grocery store. He was later resentenced to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the state's mandatory death penalty unconstitutional.

But he maintained his innocence through the years, and Duke University’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic spent years digging up evidence to support his claim.

A federal appeals court threw out the conviction in 2019, ruling that Finch was denied a fair trial because of a flawed lineup law enforcement used to obtain an eyewitness identification of him as the suspected killer. He was released from prison after prosecutors decided not to retry the case.

"They let me out with nothing. Just threw me in the street like a dog," Finch, now 83, recently told WRAL News.

He sued Wilson County authorities and former members of the State Bureau of Investigation over his conviction, alleging that he was framed. His lawsuit cites an FBI investigation that found members of the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office operated a robbery ring and were behind the attempted robbery at Holloman's store.

The county settled with him last month for $2 million.

"I don’t feel like it’s enough for the time I spent," he said. "It makes me still want to cry, how much time I spent in prison."

The pardon makes him eligible to receive another $750,000 from the state.

"Mr. Finch and others who have been wrongly convicted deserve to have that injustice fully and publicly acknowledged,” Cooper said in a statement.

Finch's lawsuit against two former members of the SBI agents is still pending.