Alan Gell - Gell spent more than four years on death row and a total of nine years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

In 1998, Alan Gell was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Allen Ray Jenkins in Aulander, North Carolina. The sole evidence linking him to the crime was the testimony of two teenage girls who had participated in Jenkins’ murder. No physical evidence connected Gell to the crime. The girls were allowed to plea bargain to lesser charges in exchange for their testimony.

 

Jenkins’ body was found on April 14, 1995. According to the girls, Gell had murdered Jenkins during a robbery in Jenkins’ home on the evening of April 3. As the two girls knew, Gell was out of state on April 4 and 5. When he returned, he turned himself in to the Bertie County Sheriff’s Department because he had been charged with stealing a truck. Gell was jailed and remained there until April 20.

 

At the time, Gell was a petty criminal and drug dealer. Investigators discounted the significance of statements taken from 17 of Jenkins’ friends and neighbors in the hours and days following the discovery of his body. Each of these people had seen Jenkins alive after April 3, at a time when Gell could not have committed the murder.

 

Gell spent nearly three years in jail awaiting his trial. The Attorney General’s office, who prosecuted the case, failed to turn over any of the 17 witness statements to Gell’s defense attorneys prior to his trial. Nor did they disclose a secret tape recording of Gell’s codefendants describing their efforts to make up a story to tell the police.

 

On the first day of trial, Gell’s attorneys told the court that they had seen a newspaper article saying that the SBI had talked to people who had seen the victim alive on April 10. The court ordered the prosecution to turn over these witness statements. The state turned over nine statements, eight of which were from people who had allegedly later said that they were uncertain of the date they last saw the victim alive. (Several of these eight testified at Gell’s second trial that they had never said that they were uncertain about the date they last saw Jenkins.) The defense presented the testimony of two of the eyewitnesses who had seen Jenkins alive after April 3. One was shaken during an aggressive cross-examination. In closing arguments, the prosecution argued that the other defense witness who had seen Jenkins alive on April 10 was either lying or mistaken. Gell was convicted and sentenced to death.

 

Gell was appointed new attorneys who obtained the prosecution files and found that there were a total of 17 people who had reported seeing the victim alive. Many of them had never said that they were uncertain of the date. They also found the secret tape recording. The new attorneys developed forensic evidence from experts who reviewed the state of Jenkins’ body and determined that he could not have died as early as April 3. In July 2001, the attorneys filed a motion asking for a new trial.

 

Despite admitting that significant evidence of Gell’s innocence had not been given to Gell’s lawyers, the NC Attorney General’s office argued that Gell’s should be still executed for the crime. A Bertie County superior court judge disagreed and in December 2001 ordered a new trial. The Attorney General decided to retry Gell.

 

He was tried for a second time in February 2004. At that trial, jurors heard from many of the 17 witnesses. They listened to the secret tape recording of the girls. The jury also heard the dramatic testimony of the medical examiner who had testified for the state at Gell’s first trial. She described how before her earlier testimony she specifically asked the state about the last time Jenkins was seen alive, and had been told that he had not been seen since April 3. She also testified that after having reviewed additional evidence about conditions in the victim’s home, as well as the statements of the eyewitnesses, it was her opinion to a medical certainty that Jenkins had not died on April 3.

 

After deliberating for less than three hours, the jury found Alan Gell not guilty. In later interviews, jurors expressed surprise that the state had retried Gell.