The Rat Trap

[Joanne98]

Death row exonerations expose failings of the ‘snitch system’

By Christopher Moraff

Levon Jones is supposed to be dead.

If the state of North Carolina had its way, Jones, 49, would have been strapped to a gurney years ago, hooked to an IV and pumped full of a lethal, three-drug cocktail until he asphyxiated.

Instead, on May 2, he walked out of prison a free man after spending 13 years on death row, and another 24 months locked up awaiting retrial — all for a murder he almost certainly did not commit.

Jones — known to friends and family as “Bo” — was released with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Capital Punishment Project after the prosecution’s star witness recanted her testimony against him. (Lovely Lorden, a former girlfriend, admitted she’d collected $4,000 in reward money in exchange for testifying against Jones.)

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3804/the_rat_trap/