Death row inmate is set free

After 14 years on death row, an inmate whose murder convictions were thrown out because investigators had withheld evidence walked out of prison Wednesday a free man.

Glen Edward Chapman, 41, was released from Central Prison shortly after 3 p.m. and ate a bologna and cheese sandwich -- a meal his mother used to make. He used a cellphone for the first time to talk to his father, sister and nieces he’s never met.

“I’m still shocked, but I feel good,” Chapman said. “I’ve still got a lot of adapting to do. A lot of things have changed, and I don’t want to try and rush nothing.”

Chapman was granted a new trial last year after a judge determined that investigators had mishandled his case. Messages left at the Catawba County district attorney’s office seeking comment on the decision to drop the murder charges and grant Chapman’s release were not immediately returned.

“I’m feeling elation,” his attorney, Frank Goldsmith, said while driving to meet Chapman. “But in addition to the joy and the elation I feel, I also feel anger -- anger for how long this wrong took to be righted.”

Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin ruled in November that Chapman had been offered ineffective assistance from his original attorneys and that evidence had been lost, destroyed or withheld. Ervin also found that the lead detective, who is still working in law enforcement in Burke County, had withheld evidence.

“I have no bitterness,” Chapman said when asked about the investigators who worked his case. “I feel a lot better without it.”

Goldsmith said they are considering filing a lawsuit. He praised Catawba County prosecutor Jay Gaither for deciding not to retry the case but questioned why it had taken so long for prosecutors to act after details about the detective’s actions emerged in 2004.

“I’m just baffled why they didn’t do anything sooner than this,” Goldsmith said.

Chapman was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder in the 1992 deaths of Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Yvette Conley in Hickory. Ramseur’s body was discovered in the crawl space of a house that had been burned twice, and Conley was found in the closet of an abandoned house. Chapman was sentenced to death in 1994.

Ervin determined that investigators hadn’t told prosecutors that a witness identified a man other than Chapman as the person he saw shortly before a June 1992 fire at the house where Ramseur’s body was discovered.

Ervin’s ruling also said detectives had failed to report witness statements that said Conley was seen alive -- with a person who had a history of violence against her -- in the days after prosecutors said she died.