The Assembly: Behind bars but on the move
Reprinted with permission by The Assembly and award winning journalist Michael Hewlett
Photo of Charles McNeair at the Davidson Correctional Center in Lexington in March 2023. {Photo: Wanda Cox}
For most of the last five years, Charles McNeair was home—or at least, close to it—in the Davidson Correctional Center. He’d grown up in Lexington and was arrested there in 1979 for a crime he says he didn’t commit.
Then last August, he was abruptly transferred 70 miles away to Wilkes Correctional Center, one of several moves since 2022. State prison officials believed he had become too “familiar” with the Davidson area, making his continued presence a potential safety risk for the minimum-security prison staff, the then-acting warden told The Assembly.
The first of those moves happened in the fall of 2022, when McNeair, now 61, was transferred to a prison in Spruce Pines. McNeair said officials told him he needed to go to that prison for a medical test. But when he got there, officials told him he didn’t need the test after all and he was soon back at the Davidson prison. Then he was sent to Dan River Prison Camp in February 2023, and to Craggy Correctional Center in Asheville about two months later before going back to Davidson.
He only stayed eight months at Wilkes before he was again moved, this time to Catawba Correctional Center in mid-April. In all, it added up to seven moves in less than two years—which is unusual for inmates like McNeair who are serving life sentences with parole, said Ben Finholt, director of the Just Sentencing Project at Duke University School of Law. Most stay at one prison that is close to their families and may be allowed to participate in work release or other programming.
As The Assembly reported last year, McNeair, who is Black, was just 16 when Lexington police officers arrested him in November 1979 based on allegations that he broke into the house of a 57-year-old white woman and raped her while holding a screwdriver and a hammer. McNeair has maintained his innocence, and he and his supporters say his case and sentencing were marred by systemic racism.
McNeair was an illiterate and poor Black teenager in a segregated city where just months before his arrest, the Ku Klux Klan marched through downtown. Butch Zimmerman, the elected district attorney who prosecuted McNeair, had a reputation for law and order—and for racism. He was known for his collection of Confederate memorabilia in his office and for regaling criminal defense attorneys with tales of slaveowners raping enslaved Black women.
McNeair was convicted after his attorney gave him a stark choice: He could plead guilty to second-degree rape and breaking and entering and get life in prison, or he could go to trial and risk a death sentence (even though North Carolina no longer executed people for rape). He chose the former, and has been in prison ever since.
His advocates, including his family members and others, say the case against him was always thin, though it’s hard to know for sure since any physical evidence is long gone, along with the criminal investigative file. They have been pushing Gov. Roy Cooper to grant a clemency petition filed nearly two years ago—likely McNeair’s last remaining avenue for freedom—and have held rallies in Lexington and at the executive mansion in Raleigh. Later this month, they will hold a banquet to raise money for the cause. And they’ve got the backing of the Lexington City Council, which passed a resolution last year in support of McNeair’s clemency.
Advocated for McNeair frequent the Governor’s Office seeking clemency. {Contributed Photo}
Wanda Cox, a former showroom and interior designer who has emerged as one of McNeair’s leading supporters, thinks McNeair’s constant relocations are reactions to the activism.
“I feel they try to break him,” she said.
‘Safety of the Facility’
One August morning last year, McNeair was preparing to travel to Raleigh, where he was part of a work crew painting at Central Regional Prison. He went nearly every day.
But on that day, McNeair said in a phone interview, Sgt. Ty Niday stopped him. The sergeant was the son of Davidson’s then-acting warden, Steven Niday, who also oversaw nearby Forsyth Correctional Center.
Ty Niday accused McNeair of assaulting a group of white men, which McNeair denied.
“I was like, ‘Man, where did you get that from?’” McNeair said he asked. “And then, he told me to go on out to work and I went on out to work. But when I came back, they was like, ‘We’re switching you out with somebody.’”
“I feel they try to break him.”
Wanda Cox, advocate for Charles McNeair
The next day, he was relocated to Wilkes, which was not only further from his family but also didn’t offer as much to occupy his time. At Davidson, he’d been involved in a Christian ministry program called JumpStart, worked in the canteen, and did work as a groundskeeper and in horticulture, in addition to the off-site painting jobs.
All that vanished at Wilkes. McNeair said he asked officials if there were programs he could participate in and was told there were none.
“I’ve been here not doing anything,” McNeair said in a phone interview from Wilkes in early April.
The day he was transferred, he filed a grievance at Davidson but got no response from state prison officials. He filed a second grievance at Wilkes Correctional Center, telling officials again that he’d been wrongfully accused of assault. He’d received no infraction for the allegation, and prison records show his last infraction was more than a decade ago.
In a written response to his grievance dated February 9, prison official Lewis Johnson wrote that Ty Niday denied making accusations against McNeair. The elder Niday, Johnson wrote, noticed that McNeair had been housed at Davidson Correctional Center since 2018 and felt he’d “become too familiar with the facility, staff and volunteers.”
Volunteers were “frequently dropping by the facility to ask that cards be given to you,” he wrote. “This shows the beginning of undue unfamiliarity [sic],” Johnson said, adding that a vigil had been held within 1.5 miles of the facility on McNeair’s behalf. “According to Warden Niday you were transferred for the safety of the facility.”
The younger Niday did not respond to a request for comment. But in a brief interview on April 12, Steven Niday, who no longer oversees Davidson Correctional Center, confirmed that one of the concerns was that McNeair’s family and supporters could just walk up to the prison “anytime they wanted.”
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“And I know that it’s been a high-profile case for a long time, trying to get him clemency and all that,” he said. “So we thought it was best to move him way back when we did.”
Asked what the specific concern was, the former acting warden said he would have to review incident reports and talk to the staff. But based on what he could remember, he said church members would come up to the prison, wanting to drop off cards for McNeair. (Members of St. Stephens United Methodist Church, the site of Davidson County’s oldest African-American congregation, have advocated for McNeair’s release.)
“We just don’t do business that way,” Niday said, suggesting people should instead mail cards.
Niday said prison officials also had concerns about supporters holding events as close as two miles of the prison.
“It just disrupts the normal operation of our facility if they come out there,” he said. “We have to shut down the yard. We have to move everybody inside, things like that.”
Jamie Lau, McNeair’s attorney with Duke Law School’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic, said he doesn’t understand Niday’s concerns.
His supporters are “certainly not trying to cause any problems” for fear of doing anything that would undermine McNeair “ultimately earning his release.”
In the interview, Niday promised he would review paperwork, consult with staff to refresh his memory, and be available the following week to talk again. But on April 15, he sent a text message referring any further questions to the communications division of the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections.
William Deen, a spokesman for the state prison system, said he could not comment on McNeair’s case because inmate records are confidential. Deen did not respond to specific questions about whether “familiarity” with the prison is a typical reason for transfer, but said officials consider many factors, including “custody level changes, resolution of security and other issues, availability of bedspace, medical needs, etc.”
“An offender may request a destination for other considerations, such as programming availability (which varies at each of our 54 facilities statewide) or proximity to family, but the management and operational needs of the prison system take precedence above all else,” he said in an email.
On the Move Again
McNeair was again transferred on April 18, this time to Catawba Correctional Center, more than two hours west of Davidson County.
McNeair said he’d requested a transfer to be closer to his family again, but had been told he was not allowed back at Davidson Correctional Center.
He thought about asking to go to a prison in Randolph County, about 100 miles southeast of his hometown, but Joy Smith, a part-time case analyst with the state Parole Commission, advised him there was a class he should take at Catawba.
But when he arrived, he was told he’d already taken that class. Deen, spokesman for the state prison system, declined to comment, saying inmate records are confidential.
“And I know that it’s been a high-profile case for a long time, trying to get him clemency and all that. So we thought it was best to move him way back when we did.”
Steven Niday, former acting warden at Davidson Correctional Center
Smith was accused in a lawsuit filed in federal court of hampering people’s chances at release by omitting or providing incomplete information. The lawsuit was filed against the parole commission and challenges its review process for people convicted as teenagers. The plaintiff is Brett Abrams, who is serving life in prison with parole for a murder he committed when he was 14.
Adams’ attorneys allege Smith gave incomplete or inaccurate information to the commission, including a claim that Abrams had locked his younger brother in a camper and set it on fire. That was not true; the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office had concluded in 1984 that the death was accidental.
Deen declined to comment on the lawsuit. In court documents, state prison officials cite a letter a prosecutor wrote the parole commission in 1998 in which he claimed two witnesses said Abrams confessed to setting the fire. Abrams was never charged in his brother’s death.
McNeair is also waiting to hear from the parole commission after a January 18 hearing—his 29th parole review. In some of his previous parole rejection letters, the commission said his release would “unduly depreciate the seriousness of the crime or promote disrespect for the law.”
The Just Sentencing Project’s Finholt said over the past few years, the commission has not granted parole to inmates who have not completed the Mutual Agreement Parole Program, or MAPP, which helps prepare selected inmates for release from prison. But inmates cannot apply for the program. In most cases, either state prison officials or the commission itself has to recommend them—and both have to agree, Finholt said.
McNeair said the parole commission asked in 2006 if he was interested in the MAPP program. He said he was, but he was later told he would not be able to participate. No reason was given. At his parole hearing in January, the commission chair asked McNeair about the MAPP program but McNeair has not yet heard whether he will be approved for it.
McNeair said it was only the second time the program had even been mentioned to him in more than 44 years in prison.
The constant moving has been hard on his family, said his sister, Sandra McNeair. She works seven days a week as a home-care nurse and cannot drive, and she has been asking state prison officials to move him back closer to home.
On February 29, the McNeairs lost their youngest sibling, Terry, at 54. Both their parents and two sisters have also died while he has been incarcerated, and per policy, he was not allowed to attend his brother’s funeral, though prison officials brought him to Lexington a day before the service so that he could see his brother’s body.
Sandra McNeair said she wishes she knew why her brother can’t be closer to home. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “I really don’t.”
For now, Charles McNeair doesn’t anticipate being transferred anywhere else for the time being. He is on a waitlist at Catawba to see what kind of work he can do, or if there are any programs he could participate in. And he prays with other inmates.
“I’ve been trying to occupy my mind,” he said.
Michael Hewlett is a staff reporter at The Assembly. He was previously the legal affairs reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal. You can reach him at michael@theassemblync.com.
