Wrongly convicted in 1970s, man freed
WHITEVILLE, N.C. — A 70-year-old man wrongly convicted of the 1976 stabbing deaths of a mother and daughter walked out of prison Friday, saying he was looking forward to sleeping in a real bed and maybe swimming in a pool.
After serving nearly four decades behind bars, Joseph Sledge was found innocent by a three-judge panel that heard testimony from a DNA expert. The expert said none of the evidence collected in the case — hair, DNA and fingerprints — belonged to Sledge. A key jailhouse informant had also recanted his story, saying authorities promised him leniency in his own case for his trial testimony against Sledge.
A district attorney who was not originally involved apologized to Sledge and promised to reopen the investigation.
Sledge was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in the September 1976 slayings of 74-year-old Josephine Davis and her 57-year-old daughter, Aileen. They were found stabbed to death in their home in Elizabethtown, a day after Sledge had escaped from a prison work farm where he was serving a four-year sentence for larceny.