Sledge was exonerated by a three-judge panel who reviewed post-conviction DNA evidence from the victims. The panel said that evidence excluded Sledge as a suspect. A witness who testified that Sledge had admitted to the murders recanted his testimony in 2013.
Josephine Davis and her daughter Aileen Davis were discovered in September 1976 inside their home in Elizabethtown, North Carolina. The women had been beaten and stabbed multiple times; Aileen Davis had been sexually assaulted.
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The commission, which began operating in 2007, is the first of its kind in the country, and is separate from the appeals process, according to the organization’s website. A person exonerated by the commission process is declared innocent and cannot be retried for the same crime.
Exonerated: Cases by the numbers
