GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — A man who was in prison for almost three decades is going home after a judge vacated a first-degree murder conviction as part of a plea deal, according to a Duke University School of Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic news release.
Benjamin Cole, 47, was convicted of the 1998 murder of Calvin Jenkins, who was shot in his Greensboro apartment during a robbery. Cole has always maintained his innocence and said he was in Ohio at the time of the murder.
“I’m innocent, and I just want to be home,” he said.
That happened Wednesday as a judge vacated his first-degree murder conviction, and Cole pleaded guilty to a lesser second-degree murder charge on an Alford plea. An Alford plea is a guilty plea that lets a defendant maintain their innocence.
Cole left a Guilford County, North Carolina courtroom on Wednesday and was reunited with his mother.
Duke Law’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic took on the case in 2021.
Jamie Lau, a supervising attorney and clinical professor of law, said that when his team first looked over the case, they determined the defense had not had access to the Greensboro Police Department’s investigation file.
When the discovery was received, the file contained records supporting Cole’s alibi that he was in Ohio.
Lau’s team in the Duke Law clinic, working with attorney Robyn Sanders and the firm Troutman, Pepper, Locke, filed a post-conviction motion to vacate Cole’s conviction.
Among the claims raised was that one of the state’s original witnesses, who was in the apartment at the time of the shooting and initially identified Cole as a suspect from more than 1,000 potential-suspect photos, changed her claim after hearing Cole speak.
Lau said Cole has a Jamaican accent, and the witness said the suspect did not speak with a Jamaican accent.
At an evidentiary hearing in May, two witnesses who testified for the state at trial testified that the assailants did not have a Jamaican accent and that Cole could not have been involved in Jenkins’s death.
Lau said there was no physical evidence in the case, and no evidence was offered against Cole to establish his guilt aside from the two witnesses.
“We, of course, believe he should have been fully exonerated, but today is a day to celebrate Cole’s freedom and rejoice in the fact that he is back home where he belongs,” Lau said.
