NC Policy Watch: “Governor Roy Cooper has granted a full pardon of innocence for Dontae Sharpe.
“I have carefully reviewed Montoyae Dontae Sharpe’s case and am granting him a Pardon of Innocence,” said Gov. Cooper in a statement on Friday. “Mr. Sharpe and others who have been wrongly convicted deserve to have that injustice fully and publicly acknowledged.”
Sharpe was wrongfully convicted of the 1994 murder of George Radcliffe of Greenville. He was just 19 when the jury sent him to prison in 1995.
He served 26 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.
And while Sharpe was exonerated in 2019, he has not been eligible for compensation from the state until this official pardon.
For months, criminal justice advocates and civil rights activists including the Poor People’s Campaign, the state NAACP, Justice Served NC and the Community Success Initiative have been pressing Cooper to issue the pardon.”