WILSON, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina man who was once on death row for a shopkeeper's slaying won't be retried in the case that put him behind bars for more than 40 years.
The prosecutor has filed a dismissal notice in the case of 81-year-old Charles Ray Finch of Wilson, who was released last month from Greene Correctional Institution.
In the notice dated June 14, Wilson County District Attorney Robert Evans writes that a retrial of the 1976 case is "impractical/impossible" because witnesses are dead, retired or relocated.
An attorney at the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic said his lawyers learned of the dismissal of charges Tuesday.
Finch was sentenced to die for the murder of a shopkeeper during an attempted robbery of a Wilson grocery store. He was resentenced to life in prison.
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