Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Name(Required)
Email(Required)
Address(Required)
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Committed to ending the death penalty and creating a new vision of justice

  • Who We Are
    • Mission & History
    • Our Values
    • People Most Proximate
    • Coalition Members
    • Staff, Board, & Advisory Council
    • Our Funders
  • What We Do
  • Why End the Death Penalty?
    • Column 1
      • Racism
      • Innocence
      • Intellectual Disability & Mental Illness
    • Column 2
      • Public Safety
      • High Cost of Death
      • Waning Support
    • Column 3
      • Lethal Injection
      • Antiquated Sentences
      • Unfair Trials
  • Events
  • Blog
  • Commutations Campaign
  • Get Involved
  • Donate

Search NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Jurors sent an innocent man to death row. Now they ask: “Where did we go wrong?”

September 6, 2018

Originally published in the News & Observer

Henry McCollum death row exoneration
Henry McCollum on the day of his exoneration in 2014 (Photo by Jenny Warburg)

By Kristin Collins

September 6, 2018

One elderly woman sat with us in her living room, wearing a pink nightgown. “I should have followed my conscience,” she said, her hands shaking. “I hope he can forgive me.” It’s unclear if she’s seeking forgiveness from the innocent man she sent to death row, or God himself.

She believed the Bible’s instruction: “Thou shalt not kill.” Yet, as a juror decades earlier, she voted for a death sentence for Henry McCollum, an intellectually disabled teenager who was accused of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl in Robeson County.

The juror put the trial out of her mind until, four years ago this week, McCollum was exonerated. New DNA testing proved another man guilty, and McCollum blameless.  After 30 years on death row, McCollum was free.

At the time, I was relatively new to my job at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, whose lawyers represented McCollum. His story showed me just how high the stakes are in this world. North Carolina came close to executing an innocent man.

I am still learning from his case. This spring and summer, a co-worker and I criss-crossed Robeson and Cumberland counties, finding jurors who unwittingly sentenced an innocent man to death. The jurors served at McCollum’s original trial in 1983, and his retrial in 1991, held in Fayetteville. Both juries voted unanimously for death.

We hoped they could shed light on how our system got it so terribly wrong. But as I knocked on strangers’ doors, I worried they would be defensive or angry. Instead, they welcomed us into their homes.

Some seemed relieved to finally talk through the trauma of the trial, though none would let us use their names. Many were ashamed of their role, afraid of what their neighbors would think. Some feared God’s wrath, and wondered if they would go to hell for McCollum’s wrongful conviction. Some shed tears at the mention of his name and said the experience was too painful to revisit. They remembered McCollum at the defense table, silent and unresponsive, like a confused and broken child.

All were denied the information they needed to reach a fair verdict. They were shown gruesome crime photos and McCollum’s confession, written by the police. Even McCollum’s defense attorneys admitted his guilt, believing the jury would spare him if he accepted responsibility.

No one told the jury that another, almost identical crime was committed just a month after the girl’s murder — and that the culprit was not McCollum, but a man who lived by the field where her body was found. The jury didn’t know fingerprints were found at the scene, and that none of them were McCollum’s. They didn’t know the case against McCollum started with a rumor from a teenage girl, who later admitted she made it up.

One juror said his biggest regret is that he trusted prosecutors to tell the truth. If McCollum was on trial, he believed, he’d probably done it.

Like everyone we talked to, his most vivid memories were the photos. At the time, he had a daughter the same age as the victim. When the verdict was announced in the courtroom, he looked at her father. The juror had done what the prosecutor said was right, and he hoped it would ease another father’s pain.

“I’ve been trying to figure out, where did we go wrong?” he said. “I feel like we got duped by the system.”

I was in the courtroom for McCollum’s exoneration four years ago. I will never forget the sight of him standing in a cage – the court probably calls it a holding cell – during a break. He stared silently at the floor, powerless against a system that had chained and caged him for his entire adult life.

Now, there is another image that stays with me. A woman sitting in the dim light of her living room, hardly strong enough to rise from her chair, wondering what those 30 years were like for Henry McCollum. Wondering whether God has heard her pleas for forgiveness.

Filed Under: False Evidence, Innocence, Latest News, Why We Care

Footer

Contact

NCCADP Alternate Logo
NCCADP
3326 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd.
Building D, Suite 201
Durham, NC 27707
noel@nccadp.org
919-404-7409

Follow Us on Instagram

This August marks 19 years since North Carolina ca This August marks 19 years since North Carolina carried out its last execution, a reminder of how close we've come to ending the death penalty and how far we still have to go. This moment calls for embodied, experiential engagement with what abolition truly means – join us in Raleigh on Saturday, August 16 from 2–6 PM to remember, resist, and reimagine a future of abolition together.

Since 1984, the state has executed 43 people under its current death penalty statute. Today, 121 people remain on death row, and capital punishment is still legal, upheld by a system that continues to fail the most vulnerable.

We Keep Us Alive is a free, public event to remember the lives taken, be in solidarity with those still facing death sentences, and call on North Carolina to end capital punishment once and for all. Join us for a day of immersive learning, community, and collective action. All are welcome.

📅 Saturday, August 16 
🕑 2–6 PM (But you are welcome to join for any part of the day!)
📍 Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, 1801 Hillsborough St, Raleigh, NC 27605
🔗 RSVP at bit.ly/WeKeepUsAlive or at the link in our bio

We can't wait to see you there!
Knowledge is power 👊 Visit nccadp.org to learn Knowledge is power 👊

Visit nccadp.org to learn more.
Did you know that NC hasn't executed anyone in alm Did you know that NC hasn't executed anyone in almost 19 years? Still, though, the state preserves this punishment, costing North Carolinians millions of dollars a year to hold onto this brutal relic of our past. 

Join us for a virtual info session to learn about the current state of the death penalty in North Carolina and to find your place in the movement to end it.

The death penalty doesn't make North Carolina safer. It targets those who are most vulnerable and is deeply rooted in racism and ableism. It's time for the law to catch up with what we already know: North Carolina doesn't need and doesn't want the death penalty. 

Register at bit.ly/NCCADPJuly2025 or at the link in our bio. We can't wait to see you on Tuesday, July 22 at 7 PM over Zoom. 

The movement needs you. Start here.
Follow on Instagram

Stay Connected

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 · NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty · All Rights Reserved · Website by Tomatillo Design

Notifications