RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A three-judge panel has ruled that a mentally ill man convicted of killing a North Carolina college student 40 years ago is innocent.
Ruling as part of North Carolina’s innocence process, the judges agreed Thursday that 66-year-old James Blackmon didn’t fatally stab Helena Payton in 1979 at what’s now St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh.
Blackmon was sentenced in 1988, about nine years after the murder, because the case had gone cold until 1983.
Both sides agreed Blackmon is mentally ill with a low IQ. In interviews with police, he wore a Superman-like cape and compared himself to Dracula.
His case came before the judges through the work of the North Carolina Innocence Commission, which ruled in November that there was enough evidence of Blackmon’s innocence to warrant a judicial review.