NAACP president holds lonely protest to demand pardons for 2 NC men

Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, state NAACP president, has been camped outside the Executive Mansion in Raleigh for more than a week in an effort to obtain pardons for two men whose murder charges were dismissed after courts overturned their convictions.

Dontae Sharpe spent 26 years in prison before his conviction vacated in 2019 after a witness who was 15 at the time of the crime recanted and said Sharpe wasn't the person who had killed a man in Greenville. The Pitt County district attorney chose not to retry the case, saying that there was no way to prove Sharp was responsible without that witness testimony.

Glen Chapman was behind bars for 15 years before the Catawba County district attorney dropped the charges against him in 2008 and he was released.

Some states grant pardons as soon as convictions are vacated and charges are dropped, but North Carolina doesn't.

"Unless and until that person is granted that pardon, those charges remain," Spearman said Wednesday. "They cannot get [jobs] because of this stain on their record that will not be removed until they are pardoned."

The 70-year-old minister sits alone on the sidewalk every day across the street from Gov. Roy Cooper's home, a sign proclaiming "Free Dontae Sharpe" hanging from a small table next to him. At night, he sleeps in his car parked nearby.

"[I'm] in this Toyota Camry, crunched up in the car," he said.

Thousands seek pardon for Greenville man after murder conviction overturned

Sharpe said he's "humbled, grateful and privileged" to have Spearman fighting for him.

"It will clear my name, and it would be the state acknowledging that a wrong was done," he said of getting a pardon. "It's not necessarily an apology, but it's an acknowledgment."

Still, Sharpe said, even a pardon cannot make up for what he lost.

"That time out of your life, you lost. You can never get back," he said.

"You never know what those people would have been able to do during the years their lives were robbed," Spearman said.

Pardons also would allow Sharpe and Chapman to receive compensation from the state for wrongful incarceration – $50,000 a year for up to 15 years they spent in prison.

"I'm not going to stop living because I don't have a pardon, but I believe it belongs to me because I went up and down in the system to prove my innocence," Sharpe said.

Cooper spokesman Jordan Monaghan said the governor "plans to make decisions on Mr. Dontae Sharpe’s pardon request and others by the end of the year." He added that the governor also was aware that Chapman has been waiting 13 years for a pardon.