Death Row Inmate Freed After Catawba County Prosecutors Drop Murder Charges

After 14 years on death row, an inmate whose murder convictions were thrown out because investigators withheld evidence walked out of prison Wednesday a free man.

Glen Edward Chapman, 41, was released from Central Prison around 3:15 p.m. and promptly had a bologna and cheese sandwich -- a comfort food his mother used to make. He used a cell phone for the first time in his life to talk to his dad, sister and nieces he's never met.

Eyewitness News spoke with Chapman, who had a big smile across his face.

“(I’m) doing just fine,” he said. “I’m at a loss for words.”

He said he had no idea what was going on when the guards came to his cell Wednesday afternoon. His freedom has come as a surprise and he said he plans to take things one day at a time until he figures out what to do next in his life.

"I'm still shocked, but I feel good," Chapman said. "I've still got a lot of adapting to do. A lot of things have changed, and I don't want to try and rush nothing."

Chapman was granted a new trial last year after a judge determined investigators mishandled his case. Messages left at the Catawba County district attorney's office seeking comment on the decision to drop the murder charges and grant Chapman's release were not immediately returned.

"I'm feeling elation," his attorney, Frank Goldsmith, said earler in the day while driving from Asheville to meet Chapman. "But in addition to the joy and the elation I feel, I also feel anger -- anger for how long this wrong took to be righted."

Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin ruled in November that Chapman was offered ineffective assistance from his original attorneys and that evidence was lost, destroyed or withheld. Ervin also found that the lead detective -- who is still working in law enforcement in Burke County -- withheld evidence.

"I have no bitterness," Chapman said when asked about the investigators who worked his case. "I feel a lot better without it. I think I'll prosper better without it."

But Goldsmith said they are considering filling a lawsuit. He praised Catawba County prosecutor Jay Gaither for his decision not to retry the case, but questioned why state prosecutors didn't immediately take action after details about the detective's actions first emerged in 2004.

"I'm just baffled why they didn't do anything sooner than this," Goldsmith said.

Chapman was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder in the 1992 deaths of Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Yvette Conley in Hickory. Ramseur's body was discovered in the crawl space of a house that had been burned twice, and Conley was found in the closet of an abandoned house. He was sentenced to death in 1994.

Ervin determined investigators didn't tell prosecutors that a witness identified a man who wasn't Chapman as the person he saw shortly before a June 1992 fire at the house where Ramseur's body was discovered.

Ervin's ruling also said that detectives failed to report witness statements that said Conley was seen alive -- with a person who had a history of violence against her -- in the days after prosecutors said she died.

Defense attorneys said the only physical evidence linking Chapman to the deaths was the result of consensual sexual relations with Conley.

Chapman’s sister, Tiny Chapman, said she never believed her brother was guilty.

“My mama don’t raise people like that,” she said. ”If we didn’t have money, we had love. Our love was there.”