News & Observer: “A North Carolina man who spent half his life in prison was freed Wednesday after being wrongfully convicted of a murder he didn’t commit — and that new evidence showed may not have happened.
Quincy Marquies Amerson spent 23 years in the Harnett Correctional Institution after being convicted of fatally striking a 7-year-old girl with his girlfriend’s car on a dark, country road in 1999. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In February, the 49-year-old Harnett County native was exonerated after Duke Law School professor James Coleman and his students in the university’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic presented evidence challenging his 2001 murder conviction. A Superior Court judge ruled Amerson had been denied a fair trial and vacated his conviction and sentence.”