* ironic that this news is from yesterday:
http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20110923/NEWS/309230039/Judges-rule-men-convicted-murder-innocent?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage10:05 PM, Sep. 22, 2011
Judges rule Asheville men convicted of murder are innocent
ASHEVILLE — Video evidence taped over with a segment from a daytime soap opera. A dismissed confession from a man never charged. A defense attorney’s admission that he put on too much pressure to accept a plea deal.
All added to a case fraught with errors — from the day a sheriff later convicted of corruption stepped into an interrogation room to revelations that DNA evidence that might have cleared two Asheville men of murder never made it to defense attorneys.
The weight of those mistakes and others convinced three judges Thursday that Buncombe County deputies and prosecutors botched the murder investigation.
The panel ordered both men set free — almost 11 years after being jailed for a killing in which they had no part. Their decision marked only the second case in North Carolina in which convictions were overturned under a law that created the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission in 2006.
Defense attorneys presented evidence over seven days of testimony that Kagonyera and Wilcoxson were wrongly prosecuted for the murder of Walter Rodney Bowman during a home invasion on Sept. 18, 2000.
..more..