NC man was exonerated of one murder, but court says DNA evidence can be used against him in second one – WRAL.com

By Matthew Burns, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor

Pittsboro, N.C. DNA evidence from a 45-year-old murder case in which a wrongfully convicted man was later exonerated can be used to link the man to a different homicide, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

Willie Henderson Womble, 67, was convicted of first-degree murder in the Nov. 18, 1975, shooting death of Roy Brent Bullock during a robbery at a Butner convenience store. He always maintained his innocence, claiming police threatened him and forced him to sign a false confession.

Another man convicted in the case notified the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission in 2013 that Womble wasn't involved in the robbery or Bullock's death, noting that the real accomplice had died in 2012.

A panel of three judges then declared him innocent in October 2014 and ordered his release from prison.

Womble was arrested again in 2018, charged with the April 11, 2017, death of Donna Dvonne Todd in her Pittsboro apartment. She had been stabbed repeatedly with a pair of scissors.

DNA on items investigators collected from Todd's apartment matched a DNA sample the State Crime Lab still had on file from Womble's earlier case, which alerted investigators to his possible connection to Todd's slaying. They then obtained a search warrant to collect a new DNA sample from him, which confirmed their suspicions.

Womble tried to suppress the DNA evidence, saying the earlier DNA sample should have been destroyed after he was exonerated. If it had, investigators would have never had grounds to seek a second sample from him, he argued.

A trial court agreed, but prosecutors appealed, and a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's ruling and sent the case back for trial.

The appellate judges ruled unanimously that state law doesn't provide for automatic destruction of evidence in cases of wrongful conviction and that it was Womble' responsibility to petition that his DNA sample be destroyed.

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NC man was exonerated of one murder, but court says DNA evidence can be used against him in second one - WRAL.com