Shawn Massey’s story should shake every North Carolinian to the core. Thank goodness Duke’s law school got involved. Massey’s release comes on the heels of Greg Taylor’s release from prison and subsequent pardon from Gov. Perdue. From the Independent Weekly:

Massey was released on May 6 from the Maury Correctional Institution after being in prison for 12 years for crimes he didn’t commit. After faculty and students in Duke Law School’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic and Innocence Project toiled for six years to prove a witness mistakenly identified Massey, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Superior Court vacated his conviction on multiple counts of second-degree kidnapping, one count of felonious breaking and entering and one count of robbery with a dangerous weapon.

“I feel that North Carolina gets away with a lot of stuff, as far as putting people in prison, because it’s cheap,” Massey said, in discussing his long-term goal of instituting a method of accountability in the justice system.

While I don’t agree with Mr. Massey’s contention about money, I can appreciate his disdain — 12 years of his life gone. I don’t know what the answer is to ensuring that only the guilty are made to pay the price, but I know we have a problem in this state. I’ve talked to Greg Taylor and to Dwayne Allen Dail (he was released several years ago after serving 18 years for a crime he didn’t commit) and it was heartbreaking to imagine what they endured while wrongly locked away.