The Elon University School of Law Chapter of the Innocence Project® will host Greg Taylor and Christine Mumma, Esq. as its guests on Monday, April 12 at 7:00 pm in Room 207 of the law school. They will be sharing the story of Taylor’s wrongful conviction and exoneration.
Taylor spent over sixteen years of his life in North Carolina prisons after being convicted of a Raleigh murder in 1993. On February 17 this year, he was officially found “innocent” by a three-judge panel of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. His case is the first exoneration by the historic Commission, which is the also the first Commission of its kind in the United States.
Mumma is an attorney located in Durham, NC and is the Executive Director of The North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, an organization that reviews innocence claims asserted by North Carolina inmates. She was part of a team of three attorneys who represented Taylor before the Commission.
Mumma has also represented other exonerated individuals, including Dwayne Dail, who was released from prison in 2007 after being wrongfully convicted of a 1987 rape of a young girl and Joseph Abbit, who was released from prison in 2009 after being wrongfully convicted of a the 1991 rape of two young girls.
The Elon Law School Innocence Project® is a student-run organization and is one of many chapters at law and journalism schools around the country. The various North Carolina Innocence Projects® operate under the umbrella of The North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence in their work to review and investigate innocence claims. As of April 2010, the Elon Law School Chapter of the Innocence Project® will have reviewed fifteen cases in this academic year and many others since the chapter was established four years ago.