A Ticking Clock for Wrongful Conviction Claims

It took Norman Satterfield 35 years to discover that the woman who accused him of rape only identified him after undergoing hypnosis. That fact was contained in an investigative report from the Statesville Police Department that prosecutors in Iredell County never turned over to Satterfield’s attorneys, even though the law required them to. 

In 2015, attorney Mark Rabil of the Innocence and Justice Clinic at Wake Forest Law School filed a post-conviction appeal, known as a motion for appropriate relief (MAR), seeking to overturn the 1979 conviction for second-degree rape and first-degree burglary. After reviewing the evidence, prosecutors agreed to reduce Satterfield’s sentence to time served. After finishing time on an unrelated conviction, Satterfield was released in 2021. He died a year later at 66.

But under a new state law, Satterfield might not have had enough time to find the evidence that formed the basis for his appeal. A provision in the 2025 Public Safety Act sets a seven-year deadline for defendants who have exhausted their direct appeals in state appellate court to file a post-conviction motion for appropriate relief. Before the change, there was no deadline. 

Initially, Republican lawmakers proposed a two-year deadline, but criminal justice reform advocates lobbied them to extend it to seven. Advocates, though, say the change still hurts the ability of many defendants to challenge their convictions. 

Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, signed the bill into law on July 8. It makes a number of other changes to North Carolina’s criminal law statutes, including sealing public access to autopsy records. The law takes effect December 1, applying to verdicts entered on or after that date. 

A motion for appropriate relief is one of the few ways defendants can challenge their convictions based on either newly discovered evidence or by raising claims such as ineffective assistance of counsel, factual innocence, and prosecutorial misconduct. Defendants cannot raise these issues in direct appeals, which they have the automatic right to file post-conviction based solely on the issues raised in the trial. A motion for appropriate relief is one of the only ways for a person who has been convicted to bring in new evidence, and there are few other avenues for raising claims that a defendant is actually innocent. 

And in post-conviction appeals, the burden shifts from prosecutors to defendants. Before trial, a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. After trial, a defendant is presumed guilty until proven innocent. 

There was previously no time limit for most criminal defendants to file a motion for appropriate relief. Last year, 147 people were exonerated nationally, and it took an average of 13.6 years before their convictions were overturned, according to the latest report from the National Registry of Exonerations. 

Chuck Spahos is the legislative liaison for the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, which lobbied for the change in state law. He said in a statement that setting a deadline for post-conviction appeals is about protecting the legitimacy of verdicts and the rights of victims. 

“Justice requires finality,” he said. “Victims should not be retraumatized decades after trial or plea by meritless filings that distort the criminal justice system’s purpose.” 

But opponents fear the new law increases the burden on defendants to prove they were wrongfully convicted.  

“It is going to mean that more wrongful convictions and wrongful sentences will stand because people will be unable to challenge them before the time limit runs,” said Olivia Warren, a criminal defense attorney in Durham. 

35 Years For Justice

In Satterfield’s October 1979 trial, the victim took the stand and said there was “no doubt” in her mind that Satterfield broke into her apartment and raped her. 

That testimony likely sealed Satterfield’s fate. After a two-day trial, the jury found him guilty of second-degree rape and first-degree burglary. He was given a life sentence on the rape charge and 20 to 30 years on the burglary conviction, according to his 2015 motion for appropriate relief. 

By 1983, he had exhausted his direct appeals. He filed several motions for appropriate relief and also sought relief in federal court, to no avail. He then contacted the Innocence and Justice Clinic at Wake Forest University School of Law, which sent a letter to the chief of the Statesville Police Department seeking an inventory of physical property in his case. 

In May 2014, Rabil found a police investigative report showing that the victim in Satterfield’s case only identified him after the police arranged for a psychologist to hypnotize her. In fact, the victim had previously failed to identify him in photographic lineups, an in-person lineup, and through voice identification. 

She couldn’t distinguish between Satterfield and his brother, who was also in the lineup, Rabil said in Satterfield’s motion for appropriate relief. But after the hypnosis, she was “absolutely positive” that Satterfield attacked her. At the time, hypnosis evidence was admissible in trials and prosecutors were required to turn over such evidence to the defense. 

That didn’t happen in Satterfield’s case. 

And, Rabil said, Satterfield likely never would have discovered that evidence under the law legislators just passed. 

Under the new law, defendants can bypass the deadline if they can prove they have newly discovered evidence. But Rabil said the existing legal standard for new evidence is high, and a defendant would have to prove, among several things, that the defendant couldn’t have discovered the evidence any earlier and that the evidence is material to the case. 

Warren said the new law would disproportionately hurt poor defendants, who aren’t automatically appointed attorneys for post-conviction appeals. They either will have to represent themselves or raise enough money to hire an attorney, she said. And because of the deadline, many defendants may file motions for appropriate relief as quickly as they can, increasing the number of appeals in the court system, Warren said. 

“Proponents of this bill will say that seven years is plenty of time to investigate and raise any and all claims about a trial and a conviction,” she said. “But we know time and time again that 10 and 20 and 30 years later, we find evidence that demonstrates that somebody was wrongfully imprisoned or sentenced. This will eliminate the ability of those people to raise claims that they are wrongfully incarcerated or innocent entirely.” 

Legal experts say defendants have to be careful about the claims they raise in post-conviction appeals. If they raise a claim and lose, they are normally barred from raising it again. 

Spahos argued, however, that many defendants file these motions long after evidence has been destroyed due to retention schedules. A seven-year deadline means that defendants can file claims while evidence is still available, he said. He also pointed out that death-row inmates still have only 120 days to file their post-conviction appeals after they have exhausted their direct appeals. 

“North Carolina currently provides one of the most expansive timeframes and broadest scopes in the nation for filing post-conviction claims,” he said in a statement. The new law, he said, “establishes a reasonable time limit, based on state file retention schedules and professional guidelines, for filing most MARs while preserving broad exceptions.” 

Rabil said there are key differences between capital defendants and non-capital defendants. One is that capital defendants are appointed two attorneys who have the time to investigate claims. And when capital defendants file a motion for appropriate relief, the N.C. attorney general’s office, which often represents the state, immediately provides all the discovery, he said. Non-capital defendants have to file motions seeking a court order to get evidence from prosecutors and police. Capital defendants also often get extensions on the deadline, Rabil said. 

Exhausting Innocence Options

The new provision comes as the state Senate is proposing to eliminate the state Innocence Inquiry Commission. 

The commission is unique in the country. With a $1.6 million budget from the state and about 12 employees, the agency has reviewed and investigated 3,800 post-conviction innocence claims in the last 19 years. The agency’s employees have the legal authority to subpoena witnesses, conduct DNA testing, and uncover new evidence without a court order. 

The commission’s work has led to 16 exonerations, including Greg Taylor, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1993. The commission also was responsible for the exoneration of Leon Brown and Henry McCollum, brothers with intellectual disabilities who authorities coerced into signing false confessions for the rape and murder of a young girl in 1983. Both men got the death penalty, but Brown was later resentenced to life; McCollum spent 30 years on death row before he was exonerated. Another exoneration occurred the same week the Senate budget recommended eliminating the commission. 

The commission is not popular among prosecutors, who contend that it is biased and that defendants should not have so many opportunities to appeal. Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill, who has run for state attorney general and lieutenant governor, castigated the commission’s work on a Winston-Salem case in 2019 and urged the legislature to “act now and review the state-funded Innocence Commission and their freewheeling expenditure of our taxpayers dollars.” 

In 2021, Cleveland County District Attorney Michael Miller emailed then-House Speaker Tim Moore and said the Innocence Commission had “outlived its usefulness,” The News & Observer reported. O’Neill and Spahos were copied on the email. 

“It is my belief that they are quickly running out of cases that meet their charter mandate and have begun to actively seek ways to justify their crusade and perhaps even their very existence,” he wrote.

The House budget proposal would keep the commission alive, though with a new name. The two chambers will have to reach consensus on a final budget, which will likely not happen anytime soon. 

Spahos said the DA’s Conference “was neither consulted, nor involved in, any proposed budgetary decisions regarding (the Innocence Commission’s) funding or existence.”

Chris Heaney, a criminal defense attorney in Raleigh, said motions for appropriate relief are critical to the criminal justice system. While he believes the seven-year time limit will mitigate some of the concerns he had with the initial, shorter proposal, it still puts too much faith in a  criminal justice system run by human beings capable of making mistakes. 

“If you cut off the escape valve, sooner or later, somebody is going to end up stuck,” he said. 

Michael Hewlett is a staff reporter at The Assembly. He was previously the legal affairs reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal. You can reach him at michael@theassemblync.com.