Before Jesse Graham read the letter that made his knees buckle, he was already someone who lived by imagination.
As a boy, he won an art contest in High Point. It was a perfect day, he says, because his mother, teacher, and classmates were proud of him.
After more than three decades in prison, he still makes art. The 72-year-old’s work includes intricate biblical scenes, colored-pencil glimpses of the world beyond the walls, paper flowers folded in his self-styled “Grami-gami,” and a detailed recycled-paper race car that became a small legend in his unit.
“I’m not incarcerated when I do my artwork,” Graham said. “I feel free.”
One afternoon in fall 2022, as he walked back to his dorm at Columbus Correctional Institution in Whiteville clutching a piece of legal mail, something shifted. The chatter of the prison fell silent, and everything seemed to move in slow motion, he said. A judge had recommended commuting the sentence of life without parole he’d been serving for a Guilford County murder.
“My eyes filled with water,” he wrote in a letter to The Assembly. He pictured his mother, who’d applauded his drawings and “prayed and cried many tears” for his return home from prison, but didn’t live to see it. She died a year earlier.
Graham isn’t free. But he is no longer sentenced to die in prison. In November 2024, then-Gov. Roy Cooper commuted his sentence to make him parole-eligible under a short-lived 1994 law. Only five people have become eligible for parole this way. In July, one of them, William Dawson, walked free at age 87.
While the numbers are small, they carry weight for people who never expected to leave prison. What exists right now is not a system, but a small opening built case by case through a patchwork of attorneys testing whether North Carolina will reconsider those sentenced to die behind bars and confront the racial disparities in life-without-parole sentences.
Black people make up just 21% of North Carolina’s population, yet they account for nearly 60% of those serving life without parole.
The Assembly analyzed court records from the state’s five most populous counties to get a clearer picture of who is serving the sentence, including the race of the defendants and victims. When the victim was white, Black defendants accounted for about two-thirds (67%) of those serving life without parole, while white defendants accounted for less than one-fifth (19%). When the victim was Black, Black defendants accounted for 76% of those serving the sentence, with white defendants accounting for 17%.
An analysis of first-degree murder cases in Mecklenburg County over roughly 30 years found that 116 homicide counts resulted in life without parole. Of those counts, 17 involved Black defendants convicted of killing white victims, while only two involved white defendants convicted of killing Black victims.
So far, four of those granted commutations under the law—including Graham—are Black. Roughly 60% of people eligible for review are also Black, a striking pattern that reflects how this narrow statute intersects with racial disparity.
Asked what the possibility of release from prison meant to him, Graham didn’t hesitate: “More than I can explain in words or tears.”
The Law That Almost Disappeared
Three decades ago, everyone serving a life sentence in North Carolina was eligible for parole. That changed in 1994, when lawmakers rewrote the state’s sentencing laws during a national shift toward harsher punishment. For crimes committed on or after October 1, 1994, lawmakers created a new category—life without parole—to replace the life sentences that once carried the possibility of release.
Some legislators worried that the shift was too severe. So they passed another law at the same time, Review of Sentences of Life Imprisonment Without Parole, that allowed people sentenced to life without parole to seek a review after 25 years in prison. It was a built-in second chance to change their sentence.
It was quietly repealed four years later as part of a broader victims’ rights package. The reversal meant that the opportunity only applies to roughly 225 people sentenced between 1994 and 1998. All of them have now served enough time to ask a judge to review their case. But the process is slow and opaque, with no right to a lawyer or hearing and no assurance they’ll ever be released.
“Life without parole doesn’t account for change, and most of these people are nothing like who they were 25 years ago.”
Amanda Zimmer, attorney
Still, for those serving what is effectively a death-in-prison sentence, this forgotten statute offers a rare crack in the wall of permanent punishment.
The process begins with a petition to a Superior Court judge in the county of conviction. By law, the judge must review the trial record, though they may also weigh health, age, prison record, and victim statements. The judge’s conclusion is only a recommendation. From there, the case moves to the state Parole Commission for another evaluation.
The decisive step comes when the governor chooses whether to commute the sentence, as Cooper did last year in the case of Graham and four others. If the governor commutes the sentence, the case returns to the Parole Commission for a second hearing to decide if they should be released.
If the commission grants parole, the petitioner usually must complete a Mutual Agreement Parole Program contract, which often includes classes, work assignments, or counseling, before release.
Many of the people serving life without parole were convicted of first-degree murder. However, state law allows courts to impose that sentence based on a person’s record as well. Under North Carolina’s violent habitual felon laws, after a third violent felony conviction, someone can be sentenced to die in prison, even if none of those crimes is first-degree murder. For example, three armed robberies or a combination of assaults and robberies could lead to life without parole.
Prosecutors decide whether to charge people under violent habitual felon law, giving them wide discretion. And while it has been used sparingly—only 49 people are currently serving time under it—its impact is starkly uneven. More than 80% of them are Black. The Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, which Cooper created in 2020 to examine bias in the criminal legal system, recommended repealing violent habitual felon status, citing its rare use and its outsized racial impact. The legislature never acted on its recommendation.
“The people who were sentenced to life without parole for violent habitual felon status present the governor with an opportunity to commute these sentences to life with parole eligibility at a minimum and to right a past wrong,” said Lauren Miller, deputy director at N.C. Prisoner Legal Services. Her organization has represented about 40 people seeking relief under the 25-year review law.
One of those eligible for review is George Baldwin. He was sentenced in 1996 in Alamance County, where Black residents comprise less than 20% of the population. Baldwin, 73, received favorable recommendations from both a Superior Court judge and the Parole Commission, but in December 2024 Cooper denied his request without explanation. (Cooper, who is now running for U.S. Senate, didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
Miller said Baldwin’s denial reflects a systemic problem: “It condemns people to life without parole who have the capacity to change and grow and who can re-enter society safely, especially at an older age where all of the statistics show there is little to no risk.”
From Obscurity to Light
For years after the 25-year review law was passed and quickly repealed, it wasn’t discussed much publicly. In 2019, people sentenced in 1994 became eligible to apply, and the law started catching attorneys’ attention after a series of blog posts by James Markham, a professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government.
“It was flying under everyone’s radar,” said Ian Mance, senior counsel at Emancipate NC, a racial and legal justice organization. “No one had really thought about it too deeply.”
In 2022, Emancipate NC and the North Carolina Black Alliance, a nonprofit focused on advancing racial equity through policy change, economic empowerment, and leadership development, teamed up to launch a pilot project to support people eligible for the 25-year review. The goal was twofold: Back a handful of petitions in court and send a public signal that the long-forgotten law could be used.
The alliance funded the work and framed it as part of a larger racial justice campaign, focused on raising awareness among judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, especially in rural counties. Emancipate NC represented the petitioners in court.
“The idea was to show this cohort of people that this is not just theoretical but real by getting someone help,” Mance said.
With no precedent to follow, Mance had to build the process from scratch: what a viable petition looks like, and how the Parole Commission, courts, and the governor’s office might interpret the review law. He looks for cases with the strongest chances, such as age at offense, disciplinary record, and demonstration of rehabilitation. Sometimes he hires a psychologist to conduct an evaluation. Petitions can be up to 30 pages.
Mance has one client, whom he declined to name, who received a commutation in November alongside Graham and a few others at different stages of the process.
“The typical timeline is around four years from start to finish,” Mance said. While it is labor-intensive, it’s better than nothing. “They have spent the last quarter-century every day believing that they’re going to die in prison.”
Graham’s Petition
Graham didn’t have the help of a lawyer like Mance. He filed his petition pro se, meaning he served as his own attorney, in September 2021.
Graham learned about the opportunity by accident. He overheard another prisoner in the yard talking about his petition. The man told Graham he was eligible and should apply.
“Well, I don’t have a lawyer,” Graham said.
“Well, you might have to do it yourself,” the man replied. “I’ll help you.”
He did more than help. He wrote the petition for Graham. When Graham read it over, he thought it was legally sound, but it didn’t feel like him. Something was missing. It didn’t show vulnerability.
“I read it, but it didn’t have the intimate side of it,” Graham recalled in a telephone interview. “It was kind of cold because he didn’t know me. He didn’t know how I felt. … And so when I read it, something inside of me said, ‘You need to write this yourself.’”
Following the format of that first draft, Graham said he put pen to paper: “I just told it like it was.”
In his rewritten petition, Graham expressed remorse for the 1995 killing that led to his sentence. He described the decades since as a period of reckoning and growth, preparing him to return to society. Judge John O. Craig III, who reviewed his case, pointed to the life Graham built inside: leading the Central Prison Veterans Club, speaking to justice-involved teens in the “Think Smart” program, and addressing UNC-CH and N.C. State University basketball players about choices and consequences.
Graham said he worked wherever the prison sent him: mopping floors, stacking license plates, inspecting soap, stitching uniforms. He captained the weightlifting team, piloted anger management initiatives, and has gone 16 years without an infraction. He kept making art.
Others noticed. A letter of support from David Jones, who met Graham during his five years at Nash Correctional in Nashville, N.C., described how he came to see him as a father figure, the man who led him to Christ and showed him “how to love life, even while incarcerated.”
“I learned how to be a man through watching how he carried himself and how he interacted with other inmates, with guards, with his mother and family members,” Jones wrote. Back then, he wrote, he was “25 years old with revenge murder on my mind.” Now, more than a decade after leaving prison, Jones is a hardworking father who wants “to love, spend time, and provide for my family. I don’t seek to do harm to anyone, and I enjoy laughing and helping people.”
His letter closed with a line that caught even Graham off guard: “I love that man dearly. If I didn’t have my son, I’d trade places with him if it were possible.”
The men Graham’s still locked up with care, too. Everyone heard Graham’s name called across the intercom for legal mail. He remembers walking it down the corridor.
“Did you get it?” one man called out.
Another didn’t wait for the answer: “Jesse got it!”
In a unit of nearly 100 men, the news ricocheted from bunk to bunk, Graham said. Even the officers, usually unreadable, showed a flicker of kindness.
On the basketball court, men on the bench pulled in close as Graham read the judge’s words: his age, failing health, work history, remorse. He told The Assembly the cheers broke out before he even finished. When he reached the last line, “I’m confident he poses no threat to public safety if released,” the hollering started again. “Some hugged me,” he said. “Everybody was happy.”
A Coin Toss
While Graham and a few others have had success under the 25-year review, attorneys say outcomes are wildly unpredictable. With no standard procedure and no clear criteria for ruling, the process turns on a judge’s discretion. Some judges explain their decision in detail; others deny in a single line. At least one even refused to make a recommendation at all.
“Defendants don’t know how to improve their odds, and they’re really holding on to the chance of getting a good recommendation from a judge,” said Amanda Zimmer, an assistant appellate defender who represented William Dawson and Randy Ballon in their appeals.
That uncertainty about the process has pushed some cases into the appellate courts. In March 2024, the state Court of Appeals ruled in State v. Walker that judges don’t have to hold hearings or explain their recommendations. In August 2024, the court said in State v. Dawson that if judges do explain their decisions, the reasoning must match the outcome. And last December, it said in State v. Ballon, that judges can’t skip making a recommendation entirely.
Those rulings reflected the state’s narrow reading of the law. In oral arguments, the Department of Justice described the statute as “not only less than clemency, it’s less than parole,” a limited mechanism “to mitigate the harshness” of life without parole. The DOJ declined to elaborate on its position when contacted for this story.
Despite its flaws, Zimmer said the law has promise: “It’s slow, it’s frustrating, but it’s something. Life without parole doesn’t account for change, and most of these people are nothing like who they were 25 years ago.”
Fourteen states plus Washington, D.C., now have versions of “second look” laws, which let judges revisit long sentences after people have served time. In D.C., people who committed a crime before age 25 and have served 15 years may petition the court under the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act.
The law requires a hearing and written opinion, and the court must weigh specific factors—the person’s age and circumstances at the time of the crime, their maturity and rehabilitation since, their disciplinary record and program participation, any psychological evaluations, and statements from victims or community members—before deciding whether release would serve the interests of justice.
“I learned how to be a man through watching how he carried himself and how he interacted with other inmates, with guards, with his mother and family members.”
David Jones’ letter on behalf of Jesse Graham
North Carolina’s review does not tell judges what factors to consider. Judges can base their decision solely on the trial record, and attorneys say that record rarely reflects who a person has become since their conviction.
“You could say, in a way, this 25-year review law was sort of like an early version of the second look,” Mance said.
“Like a rough draft,” he added in a joking tone. “There’s some holes in it.”
Other states’ laws, he added, “are much more thoughtfully drafted and much more substantive in effect.” North Carolina’s path to commutations remains uphill. “This is a real, relevant place to be doing this sort of work because they really make us work,” he said. “When you get a win, you know that you really earned it. They don’t just give them out here.”
Ben Finholt, who leads the Just Sentencing Project at the Duke University School of Law, said the biggest problem is that success often depends on having a good attorney in your corner.
“You basically need Ian Mance, who is a really smart, really humane, and a real bulldog of a litigator who’s willing to spend four years just grinding away to get you in front of a judge, and then when you get that recommendation, to stay in touch with the governor’s office and the Parole Commission. Do all the grinding work it takes to see it through to the end,” Finholt said. Without that person? “It’s really hard to get anyone’s attention.”
Finholt thinks the best solution is a structured template for considering petitions for review that judges or parole commissioners could use tomorrow. Start with the static factors: the unchangeable facts, like the severity of the crime and the circumstances around it. Was the person convicted of the crime young, addicted, coerced, or homeless? Weigh those against the brutality of the offense. If the harm clearly outweighs the mitigation, denial is permitted. If not, that reason is off the table.
Next are the dynamic factors, the things that change over time: age, health, prison record, education, work history, leadership roles, and release plans. Finally, they should consider community sentiment: the support or opposition from the people who will live alongside the individual after release. Do they know the version of the person today?
By weighing these factors in sequence, Finholt said, decision-makers could bring transparency and consistency to a statute that now offers neither, turning a patchwork process into something principled.
Finholt estimates it would take about $100,000 a year to fund a small team of attorneys to handle these cases, yet the lack of a formal process makes it a hard sell to funders.
Mance hopes that will change as more people walk free. “When a couple of these folks are outside the walls and can tell their stories … that will motivate attorneys who might otherwise have seen this as just a fool’s errand,” he said. “Walking someone out of prison: It does not get better than that.”
For now, the wins are rare. When N.C. Prisoner Legal Services gets requests for help, the organization sends out a 20-page roadmap to help people file on their own.
After Graham’s sentence was commuted, he began a second parole review. Two months after meeting with the prison psychologist as part of that review, Graham suffered a medical emergency and was transferred to Greene Correctional Institution in Maury, a minimum-custody re-entry facility with better medical care. “I almost died,” he said. His doctors say he should remain in a wheelchair for at least another year, avoid physical therapy, and see a hematologist.
But in November, the board denied his parole. The letter said: “Your continued correctional programming in the institution will substantially enhance your capacity to lead a law-abiding life if released at a later date.”
Graham is no longer in a medium-custody prison, where men wear brown and gun towers cast their shadow across the yard. Now he lives at what he calls a camp, wearing a green uniform with no weapons overhead.
He’s due back before the parole board in May 2026. Before then, he’ll meet with his case manager to see what programs might help show he’s ready.
And still, hope endures. “My daughter’s grown, and I’ve got grandkids and great-grandkids I’ve never seen face to face,” he said. “Just to sit with them, touch them, talk to them. That would mean everything.”
This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.