Alan Gell

James Alan Gell (born 1974 in North Carolina) is an American who was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 and sentenced to death in Bertie County, North Carolina, at the age of 22.

Allen had been convicted in 1990 of statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl in Ahoskie, North Carolina.

He was imprisoned for six months after pleading guilty to two counts of indecent liberties with a minor.

When police searched Jenkins' house after being notified of his death, they saw a baking pan of fish and an open container of wine coolers, indicating he had received guests earlier that day.

They learned that he was seeing Crystal Morris, who was fifteen years old.

She and her friend Shanna Hall, also 15, were very close at the time and often went to the Jenkins house to drink.

They were initially suspects in the murder and were charged with first-degree murder.

When the police questioned them after Jenkins' death, Hall and Morris showed officers where Gell had allegedly hidden the guns used in the shooting.

Their accounts changed several times and they implicated Gell, Hall's boyfriend, in the murder.

The prosecutor offered each of them a plea deal in exchange for testifying against Gell at trial.

They each pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to ten years in prison.

Both testified that they saw Gell shooting Jenkins with a shotgun on April 3.

Allen Ray Jenkins, age 56, was found dead on April 14, 1995, in his home in Aulander, North Carolina.

He had been shot twice in the chest with a shotgun.

In the days and weeks after the murder, the police talked to several disinterested witnesses who said they had seen Jenkins alive as late as April 10.

Jenkins' brother, Sidney Jenkins, as well as his neighbor, Mary Hunt, recalled seeing him on April 8, 1995.

Edward and Margaret Adams reported seeing Jenkins on April 9, 1995, while out for a walk.

Jenkins was seen in Ahoskie on April 10 by a former coworker, a restaurant waitress, and a man who said he sold a dozen herring to Jenkins on that date.

By Sidney Jenkins' account, his brother Allen Jenkins had a weakness for “underage girls”.

Gell was indicted August 7, 1995, on charges of first degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, armed robbery, and conspiracy to commit armed robbery.

They testified during Gell's first trial in 1998 that Jenkins had invited them over for wine coolers.

The state relied on Morris and Hall to testify against Gell in his trial.

The girls testified that Hall had called Gell, asking him to come to Allen Jenkins' house to help Hall and Morris Rob Jenkins.

He was convicted at a 1998 jury trial and sentenced to death by Bertie County Superior Court for the crime of first degree murder later that same year.

While on death row, Gell appealed his conviction; it was denied in 1998 by the state appeals court.

It overturned the conviction in 2002, and remanded the case to the lower court for a new trial.

But in 2002 his attorneys gained a hearing by a State Superior Court judge after arguing that prosecutors had withheld key evidence in the case.

The defense alleged that the police withheld eyewitness information from the forensic pathologist, Dr. Mary Garvin Fransioli

Gilliland, which affected her estimate of the date of death.

He served nine years as an inmate on death row before being acquitted in a second trial in 2004; he was freed from prison and exonerated that year.

Gell was acquitted in 2004 in his second trial and freed from prison, receiving a full exoneration that year.

As a result of this case, the state legislature passed a law affecting every felony case in the state; it requires "prosecutors to share their entire file with defendants, a change designed to prevent the misconduct that put Gell on death row."

Gell struggled to build his life after he gained freedom, even as he became a spokesman for the anti-death penalty movement.

He was charged with statutory rape and possession of cocaine in 2006; he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years.

In 2009 the state and SBI insurers paid a civil suit settlement of $3.9 million to Gell over his 1998 wrongful conviction for murder and years of imprisonment on death row.

Gell's parents divorced when he was young.

His mother Jeannette remarried, to Joel Johnson, with whom she had a daughter Frankie.

Gell got into trouble as a youth, smoking marijuana and using cocaine, and selling cocaine to support his habit.

He was the 113th person to be freed from death row in the United States.

The State Superior Court determined that the prosecution had withheld significant exculpatory evidence and impeachment evidence in the first trial.