Madison's Pierpoint freed

Jonathan “Scott” Pierpoint walked out of prison Wednesday, hugged the lawyer who helped set him free and marveled at using a cell phone for the first time. He then headed for a coffeehouse to eat something other than the prison food he endured for 17 years.

At 46 years old, the Hot Springs man won release from a life sentence after being wrongfully convicted in 1992 of sexually abusing his stepson.

Tuesday in Avery County Superior Court, Judge C. Philip Ginn wrote that the stepson's statements and new medical evidence made it clear the Hot Springs man should never have been imprisoned.

In the order releasing Pierpoint, Ginn said “In light of the new evidence, no reasonable juror would have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Those involved with the case credited the former stepson, District Attorney Jerry Wilson and Duke Law School's Wrongful Convictions Clinic — which spent more than two years on the case — with gaining Pierpoint's freedom.

Pierpoint walked out of the Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution in new clothes bought for him by his attorney, Theresa A. Newman. He carried three plastic bags of personal belongings and a bank envelope holding $45.

“It's hard to describe,” Pierpoint said as he looked at the sky. “It's actually like being born again.”

He said he was pleased the newspaper was there to document his freedom. “They covered it when I went in. I hoped they'd cover the point when I came out.”

‘Troubling issues'

Newman, co-director of the Duke clinic, said her team of attorneys and Duke law students based their petition to free Pierpoint on “troubling issues” related to his former legal representation.

In the original trial, which lasted a day and a half, Pierpoint was convicted by a jury of raping his then 7-year-old stepson sometime around Oct. 15, 1990.

Pierpoint and the boy's mother were separated, but she was staying with him temporarily so she could care for her sick mother in Hot Springs, according to a newspaper story written at the time.

On the night of the supposed offense, she took her other child and left the stepson with Pierpoint. In August 1991, Madison County Department of Social Services said it received the first report of a possible sex crime. A counselor at Blue Ridge Mental Health Center was the first to bring up the specter of abuse.

Pierpoint was arrested Oct. 10, 1991, almost a year after the night the boy's mother had left him in Pierpoint's care.

The boy testified in Madison County Superior Court that Pierpoint forced him on a bed and raped him. Counselors said in court the boy told them he wanted to hurt Pierpoint for what he had done to him.

An Asheville physician told the court the boy's anal opening was irregular and had suffered some type of trauma. In addition, the boy had experienced bowel problems.
When he took the stand, Pierpoint said he and a friend were deer hunting on the day the boy said the rape occurred. But prosecutor Jim Baker — now a superior court judge — said the precise date was not important, since the court did not require youths to recall exactly when offenses occurred.

“This is the most serious crime you can have and still hear the victim testify,” Baker told the jury.

A jury convicted Pierpoint of first-degree sexual offense, and he was sentenced to life by Judge George Fountain. The amount of time was not unusual for the crime, legal experts now say.

But six years later — in 1998 — the boy, then 13, began telling anyone who would listen that his testimony had been false. He blamed his testimony on his youth and pressure from his mother.

Pierpoint filed a motion for relief and was appointed legal help. But in 2001, Superior Court Judge Marcus L. Johnson of Mecklenburg County denied the motion.

That decision was likely in part due to the fact that the stepson was still a minor, Newman said.

“People are always concerned that minors might be operating due to external pressures, pressure from families,” the Duke clinic co-director said.
The years went by and Newman said the stepson continued to be troubled by what he saw as an injustice.

‘No crime'

Pierpoint had seen headlines and heard stories of other prisoners being freed, some based on new evidence and others relying on DNA examination to prove they had not committed the crime that put them in prison.

But Newman said this case was difficult because no crime occurred to begin with, so there was no real criminal to dredge up. “There was no crime, so you can't find the real perpetrator. The crime never happened.”

“We got this case in 2008,” she said Wednesday while waiting at a Spruce Pine coffee shop for a phone call from the prison. “Mr. Pierpoint sent a letter asking for help to the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence.”

After the center determined it met the basic criteria, it was assigned to the Duke team, who began digging into the trial history and interviewing Pierpoint and his accuser.

“To win in a case of recantation you have to prove to the court that the recantation is more likely true” than the original testimony, Newman said. “You have to put up something that will show that the recantation is the truth.”

That came in the medical evidence, she said, when it was shown that the accuser had suffered a medical condition that created a physical situation that could appear he had been raped. “That this new evidence supports (the) recantation” discredited the conclusion by a doctor that the boy had been raped, Judge Ginn wrote Tuesday.
He ordered Pierpoint released “as soon as that release can be arranged.”

After a brief interview at the gate to the prison, Newman and her team took their client back to the coffee shop in Spruce Pine where he sat sipping a soda and talked to family members on his lawyer's cell phone. A nearby Internet kiosk was pointed out to him, and he smiled. “I've never been on the Internet.”

Asked how he felt, Pierpoint paused for a sip of his Pepsi. “It's beautiful,” he said quietly. “It's beautiful having my freedom back.”
 

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