By Tori Newby
Teresa Ingram keeps two bedrooms empty in the house she bought in 2023, hopeful that one day her imprisoned sons will return home.
On August 8, Ingram received the phone call she had been awaiting for more than two decades. She scrambled to buy air mattresses, shoes and underwear. She prepared to take the next month off from work to spend time with her sons, Nathaniel Cauthen and Rashawn Banner, who hadn’t lived under her roof since they were teenagers.
But within days, an emergency petition from the state of North Carolina blocked Banner’s and Cauthen’s release from prison, keeping Ingram’s sons behind bars and thrusting the case of the “Winston-Salem Five” into another legal standoff that will likely take years to resolve.
“It went from reaching the heavens to falling all the way back down to the ground,” Ingram said. “And it is a hard drop.”
Banner and Cauthen, now 37 and 39, were two of five Winston-Salem teenagers convicted in the 2002 murder of NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather, Nathaniel Jones.
In August, based on a key witness recantation and other newly discovered evidence, Superior Court Judge Robert Broadie dismissed all charges with prejudice — meaning the men would be released and could not be retried.
Almost immediately, the state requested a stay on the ruling and appealed the case, which prevented Banner and Cauthen’s release in August. The Court of Appeals denied the state’s appeal Sept. 30, affirming the men’s exonerations.
Just as Banner and Cauthen eagerly packed up their bags for a second time, the state blocked their exonerations once again through an emergency petition to the N.C. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court then ruled Oct. 15 to keep the men in prison until the Court of Appeals reviews the merits of the case.
Three Supreme Court justices dissented, stating that the appellate court acted within its discretion to deny the state’s appeal.
“Every moment that these defendants are imprisoned when they should be freed is an irreparable harm,” wrote Justice Allison Riggs in her dissent.
It could be years before the brothers see any hope of release again.
“It’s frustrating that we’ve got to go through it and continue to go through it,” Banner said.
Christopher Bryant and Jermal Tolliver, two of the Winston-Salem Five, were released from prison in 2017 after completing their sentences for second-degree murder. Dorrel Brayboy was released a year later and was murdered in 2019. Banner and Cauthen, convicted of first-degree murder, have been serving life sentences.
The five men have maintained their innocence for decades, claiming their initial confessions were coerced. In 2020, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission reviewed the case and found sufficient evidence of factual innocence. The commission referred the case to a three-judge panel, which upheld the defendants’ convictions in 2022.
Attorney General Jeff Jackson wrote in August’s emergency petition that the state is acting “out of an abundance of caution,” concerned about releasing Banner and Cauthen into the community. The petition states that the men were convicted of first-degree murder by a jury of their peers and that the decision was upheld by the 2022 court decision.
Case law defines a dismissal with prejudice as an extreme remedy, as it permanently closes the case. The state argued in its petition that it has the right to appeal Broadie’s decision.
“That a single superior court, more than twenty years after the Defendants’ convictions were obtained, could vacate those convictions and award unconditional release without any opportunity for the State to seek appellate review is unprecedented and would be perilous for our criminal justice system,” the petition said.
The N.C. Department of Justice declined to comment amid the ongoing litigation.
Joseph Hyde, a former Special Deputy Attorney General at the N.C. DOJ, said post-conviction release is designed to be difficult to obtain, and post-conviction appeals are often dismissed or denied.
“The case law recognizes such a strong preference for jury verdicts,” said Hyde, who is now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Government. “Once the jury has made factual determinations of guilt, that is a pretty hard stop.”
But reversing a conviction in North Carolina has been done before. Since 1989, 78 innocent people in the state have been exonerated of crimes, with an average of 12.6 wasted years in prison, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
Several of these cases were dismissed with prejudice. Darryl Hunt was convicted of murder in Winston-Salem at the age of 19, and he was released almost 20 years later in 2004 — 10 years after new DNA evidence linked another man to the crime. A Superior Court judge dismissed Hunt’s charges with prejudice, releasing Hunt and ensuring he could never be tried again.
“The state made this big deal about the case being dismissed with prejudice, like saying it’s never been done before, which is baloney,” Chris Mumma, Banner’s and Cauthen’s attorney, said.
Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill told the Winston-Salem Journal in August that he was surprised and shocked by Broadie’s ruling and that the Attorney General’s office agreed to work with local prosecutors to uphold the conviction.
O’Neill could not be reached for comment.
The North Carolina Constitution establishes the Attorney General’s office as independent from each county’s district attorney, with each officer independently elected and no institutional relationship between the two.
Hyde said the DOJ may decline to seek appellate review.
“We’re all trying to accomplish justice for North Carolinians, but it’s not a relationship such that when the prosecutor says take it up, the DOJ has to do that,” Hyde said.
Physically distant but emotionally bound
When Broadie dismissed the charges in August, Banner and Cauthen packed their bags, gave away their food and few belongings, and waited for a release that never came.
After the Court of Appeals declined to take up the case in late September, the prison had everything in place for the men to leave once again. The following day, the state filed an emergency petition to block their release, forcing Banner, as he put it, to “start back from scratch.”
“They went down to receiving because they were told they were being picked up to go home, and then they were told, ‘sorry, just kidding, go back to your cell,’ and they had already given all their things away,” Mumma said. “I mean, that’s hugely impactful.”
Cauthen said he was looking forward to reuniting with his brother, who has been held in a separate prison since Cauthen was 18. They only see each other only in court, and January’s evidentiary hearing was the first time in years that they embraced.
“Me and my little brother should be at home right now, and this should be over with,” Cauthen said.
The brothers occasionally talk by phone when they both manage to call their mother at the same time, and she connects the lines. But, they said, they miss the relationship they had growing up.
Ingram said the family was extremely close when the boys were young, including her oldest son, Joseph Cauthen, who is now 43. When the boys were teenagers, she left her shifts at Bojangles to meet them at the rec center and took her sons to Bible study several times a week. With extended family nearby, the boys always had someone looking out for them.
“They came from a structured home,” Ingram said. “They came from people that love them. They had a support system.”
When her sons were first held in a Morganton facility as teenagers, Ingram visited them twice per week, as often as the prison allowed. Banner and Cauthen were later split up and shuffled between prisons throughout the next decade, and Ingram drove up to eight hours round trip each week to visit her sons, depending on where in the state they were.
Separated by glass, Ingram and her sons would put their hands up to each other’s at the end of the visits. Before departing on the long drive home, Ingram would sit in the parking lot and cry.
“The visits were always nice,” Ingram said through tears. “It was just that when I had to leave, and I can’t say whether it was hard on them, but I can certainly tell you, it was certainly hard on me.”
Currently, Cauthen is held in Pender Correctional Institution in Burgaw, N.C. — the opposite side of the state from his brother, who is 330 miles away in Mountain View Correctional Institution in Spruce Pine, N.C.
Ingram speaks with Banner twice per week, which is as often as the prison allows. Cauthen’s prison has fewer restrictions, and he stays on the phone with her each night until it cuts off at 10 p.m. In recent years, Ingram has been able to see her sons at their court appearances in Forsyth County, where she still lives.
When Ingram scrambled to prepare her sons’ homecomings, only for the state to block their release, she said it felt like the world was crumbling around her. But, she said, she’s tried to stay strong for her sons.
“Somebody has got to be mad, somebody has got to be angry, and I’m going to be that person,” Ingram said.
Dismissing the charges
Broadie vacated the charges based on newly discovered evidence and ineffective assistance of counsel. That evidence includes a key witness recanting her prior testimony and new research that explains why the teenagers might have falsely confessed.
When the five men were accused at ages 14 and 15, the state brought in one witness: Jessicah Black, a 16-year-old white girl who was with the five Black boys at the time of the murder. At the jury trials, Black testified that she drove the boys near Jones’ house and heard the boys yell at Jones as they beat him to death.
She now says that was all a lie.
In the January evidentiary hearing, Black said that the officers at her initial questioning told her she would go to prison as an accessory to murder if she didn’t testify for the state, and she had to repeatedly alter her story to match what they wanted her to say.
“Everything I said to them had to be changed, time and time again,” Black said at the January hearing. “And then once they would stop asking me about certain things, I made the assumption that I got it right, I finally got it right.”
Black first recanted her witness testimony to a Houston Chronicle journalist in 2019, and she has repeated her statement under oath several times since then.
Broadie found her recantation to be credible, and it was part of his decision to vacate the charges with prejudice in August.
“There is reasonable probability that but for the admission of Ms. Black’s false testimony, a different result would have been reached at the Defendants’ trials,” Broadie wrote.
Northeastern University Professor of Law Daniel Medwed, who has focused his research on wrongful convictions, said courts tend to view recantations with caution.
“Often recantation cases are ones that prosecutors are skeptical of because they think maybe someone got to the witness, and maybe the witness is feeling intimidated, or maybe they, for whatever reason, begin to doubt the credibility of that witness now,” Medwed said.
Mumma said she thinks Black had no external motivation to recant.
“Her life has been hell since she recanted,” Mumma said. “She’s gotten death threats, she’s had health issues because of the stress. There is no benefit.”
Black could not be reached for comment.
Broadie also ruled that new psychological research on false confessions, published after the 2004 trials, qualifies as newly discovered evidence. Studies now show that prolonged detention and isolation, as well as mental impairment, can lead teenagers to falsely confess.
The teenagers didn’t have adults present during their initial questioning and were in the police station for more than eight hours before their taped confession statement, experiencing hours of isolation and intermittent interrogations that weren’t recorded. An expert asked to review the case testified in January that the defendants were mentally disabled, according to their school reports.
Broadie also determined ineffective assistance of counsel, stating the trial attorneys failed to investigate the defendants’ intellectual disabilities. This means the attorneys didn’t use evidence of cognitive impairment to explain the voluntary confessions.
The men testified at the evidentiary hearing that they thought they could go home if they said what the officers wanted them to say.
“You don’t isolate a child like that,” Cauthen said in an interview. “You don’t do that. That is a child, that is somebody’s child.”
In the state’s petition to block Broadie’s dismissal of the charges, it states a new trial is the proper remedy for recantation evidence and ineffective assistance of counsel, rather than the dismissal of charges.
Banner welcomes the idea of a retrial.
“Since I was 14, I’ve been telling them I didn’t do it,” he said.
Additional evidence presented at the January hearing showed that the DNA at the crime scene doesn’t match any of the defendants, and Broadie ruled that this evidence contradicts the state’s case at the jury trial. The DNA profiles were developed using testing kits made available after 2015, and thus counted as newly discovered evidence, Broadie ruled.
“The DNA profiles further serve to corroborate Defendants’ assertions that their confessions were false, that Ms. Black’s testimony at trial was also false, and the Defendants were not present at the scene of the crime,” Broadie wrote.
‘Waiting for the storm to pass through’
If they’re eventually released, Banner and Cauthen both said they want to use their platforms to advocate against injustice in the legal system, especially for wrongfully convicted people.
“The quicker I get out, the quicker I can be a voice for them,” Banner said.
There’s no set timeline for how the appeals process will move forward. Mumma thinks it could be at least two years before the appeal is final.
While they wait for more news, Cauthen reads and plays chess to occupy his mind while staying up to date on the legal filings, reading up on his case. Banner stays busy with his job as a supply clerk and playing basketball, and they both check in with their mother every week.
“I’m just waiting for the storm to pass through,” Banner said.
Until it does, there will be two empty rooms in Ingram’s house, as she waits for the day her boys return home.
