Ronnie Long

A detailed alibi from multiple witnesses

Witnesses testified that on Sunday, April 25 Long attended a class-reunion planning meeting until about 8 p.m., was at home from about 8:30 to 10 p.m. and spoke by phone with his mother, his two-year-old son, and the boy's mother, then went to a party in Charlotte about 25 miles away. People at the party said he showed no bruises or signs of a struggle, even though the victim said she fought back, and that he wore khakis, not jeans.

No physical evidence ever linked him to the crime

At trial the State's shoe-print expert said only that the banister print "could have been made" by Long's shoe and that it was not a positive identification. Prosecutors told jurors that the absence of any physical evidence tying Long to the scene showed the honesty of the police.

The attacker's description did not fit him

Bost first described a man with no mention of facial hair, then said her attacker wore a mustache. She consistently called the attacker "light-skinned," "yellow," or "not your normal black person"; Long is dark-skinned.

43 fingerprints from the crime scene excluded Long

In its initial review, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission obtained 43 latent fingerprints that Concord police had lifted from the scene — previously undisclosed even after the 2005 records order. Long was excluded as the source of every one. Four were of sufficient quality to search in state and national databases; Concord police reported "no possible contributors" but declined to say which databases they queried.

State lab reports from 1976 that pointed away from Long

SBI reports, disclosed to the defense only after the 2005 order, found that hair at the crime scene differed from Long's and was more reddish in color, that no hair consistent with Long's was found on Bost's clothing, and that Long's clothing carried no paint or carpet fibers matching the samples from her home. Four of the five matchbooks in his family car were a different color than the burned matches at the scene, and the analyst said the burned matches "probably didn't originate from" the fifth.

Hospital samples collected and then lost

The treating physician combed Bost for hair and took a vaginal swab, and hospital records show a release form signed by an officer acknowledging receipt of the samples. The samples have never been located, which is why DNA testing was never possible.

Exculpatory lab results withheld for three decades

The SBI evidence reports were not given to Long's trial attorneys. A trial lawyer testified at the 2008 hearing that each undisclosed test would have mattered to the defense, and the trial prosecutor said he had never seen the reports and would not have allowed the detective to testify as he did. In August 2020 the en banc Fourth Circuit ruled 9-6 that his due-process rights were violated.

False testimony about the evidence

Detective Van Isenhour testified that the only evidence he took to the SBI lab was the shoe print and that it never left his control. His own May 12, 1976 report listed 14 items delivered to the lab, and the SBI kept all of it for eight days. Judge Stephanie Thacker, dissenting from the 2020 panel ruling, wrote of his testimony: "In short, he lied. Repeatedly."

Misleading testimony about the burned matches

Outside the jury's presence, Detective David Taylor told the judge the matches from Long's car did not match those at the scene. In front of the jury he said they were "of a similar nature."

A suggestive identification procedure

Police had Long's photo but instead took Bost to the courthouse on the day of his misdemeanor hearing, where she sat disguised and watched Black men charged with crimes pass by. She identified Long before he spoke. About 20 minutes later she picked his photo from an array in which he was the only person in a leather jacket.

A jury pool screened by law enforcement

Before voir dire, the Cabarrus County sheriff and other law-enforcement officers reviewed the list of potential jurors and disqualified people from jury duty, and the county kept no record of why. The resulting 49-person pool had two Black residents in a county that was about 20 percent Black; an all-white jury was seated.

A cross-racial identification that shifted over time

Bost did not select anyone from the first photo array. Her later accounts added details absent from her initial report, including a mustache, and she stood by the "light-skinned" description at trial, against Long's appearance. Judge Thacker's dissent noted the identification was neither as strong nor as consistent as earlier courts and the panel majority had ruled.

Ambiguous shoe-print and match evidence presented as corroboration

The State relied on a banister shoe-print impression that its own expert would not call a match, and on matchbooks the testing detective admitted outside the jury's presence did not match the burned matches at the scene.