Advocates for Charles McNeair to join rally outside Governor's mansion

{Advocates continue to rally for the release of Charles McNeair. Contributed Photo}

By Michael Hewlett

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Forty-four years ago, Lexington police arrested Charles McNeair, a 16-year-old Black boy, and charged him with allegedly breaking into a 57-year-old white woman’s home and raping her. McNeair insisted he was innocent and that his attorney coerced him into pleading guilty, resulting in a life sentence. 

As reported back in May, race was central to the case—and it fit a history of Black men accused of raping white women who faced harsh and sometimes deadly repercussions. The Ku Klux Klan had marched in Lexington mere months before his arrest, and the elected district attorney who prosecuted McNeair was a documented racist. 

McNeair turns 61 this month and has spent all of his adult life behind prison walls. A small nonprofit called Advocates for Charles McNeair has pushed for his release. In June, the Lexington City Council passed a resolution urging Gov. Roy Cooper to grant a clemency petition McNeair’s lawyer filed on September 12, 2022. 

On December 9, Advocates for Charles McNeair will join with Decarcerate Now, a coalition of activists that is part of ACLU of North Carolina, to hold a rally outside Cooper’s mansion in Raleigh. 

Kristie Puckett, the coalition’s founder, said McNeair’s case is similar to that of Ronnie Long, who spent 44 years in prison before he was exonerated. 

“He was 16 when he was accused of rape,” she said about McNeair. “And so, he accepted this plea deal because he thought his life was on the line. And here he is, 44 years later, still incarcerated.”

Prison officials moved McNeair from Davidson Correctional Center, where he has spent most of his sentence, to Wilkes Correctional Center in September. Wanda Cox, a co-chair for Advocates for Charles McNeair, said he is too far away for some of his family members to visit. Cox also said McNeair can no longer participate in a Christian-based re-entry program he had just started at Davidson. McNeair had also been traveling to Raleigh as part of a work program, she said. 

Cox said she and other advocates won’t stop calling for McNeair’s clemency until Cooper acts: “We are not going away.”