In August of 2019, Dontae Sharpe, a native of the Greenville community of North Carolina walked out of the Pitt County courthouse a free man after serving almost 26 years in prison for a crime that he didn’t commit. His exoneration came after years of collaborative, strategic work of local grassroots movements, the Pitt County Branch of the NAACP, the NC NAACP State Conference, SpiritHouse Inc, Color of Change, as well as the Duke University Wrongful Convictions Clinic and Forward Justice.
Dontae’s wrongful conviction case is just one example of how corruption in the legal system steals the lives of so many people. This case and many others like it are the driving force in Forward Justice’s commitment to fight for law enforcement and prosecutorial accountability.