A prosecutor said in court that someone else did it. Duke Law’s Innocence Project unearthed new evidence. Can Lamont McKoy convince the Supreme Court he is innocent?
May 18, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Lamont McKoy at his home in Fayetteville, N.C., in February. He was released on parole in 2017 after 27 years in prison. (Melissa Sue Gerrits for The Washington Post) Comment on this storyComment
Lamont McKoy had been in prison for five years when he reached out to the police.
“I’m not trying to be a nuisance,” he wrote in his 1995 letter to a Fayetteville, N.C., officer. “But please help me out of this mess.”
Four years earlier, McKoy had been convicted of murdering Myron Hailey in a drug deal gone bad. McKoy, 18 years old at the time of his arrest, said he had heard rumors at the time that a man named William “Rat Rat” Talley was truly responsible. Now McKoy named 10 people he thought might say as much to law enforcement.
Police didn’t need McKoy’s help. As part of a…
This article was written by Rachel Weiner and originally published on www.washingtonpost.com