Now on parole, 2 Chester men spent decades in prison. Will their names ever be cleared?
James Robert McClurkin, on parole after serving nearly four decades in prison, took the witness stand Thursday in a tiny Chester County, S.C., courtroom. He wore a suit that hung off his lean frame.
He wiped tears.
He said he is a robber and a housebreaker.
“But I ain’t never killed nobody,” the 66-year-old McClurkin said. “I never participated in no murder. An innocent man got nothin’ to hide. I am an innocent man.”
MccLurkin sat in a Chester County Family Court courtroom, yards away from the criminal courtroom where he was convicted of the 1977 murder of Claude Killian, a 73-year-old laundry owner who was shot to death in 1973.
McClurkin and his friend, Ray Charles DeGraffenreid, also 66, were convicted of the crime after two trials that remain under scrutiny. The question is whether the trials were fair.
“I been locked up almost all my life for killing a man I ain’t never met,” McClurkin said.
McClurkin said those words Thursday as a free man -- somewhat.
He remains on parole after he was freed in 2016. Yet he still is, under the law, a convicted killer.
And he will remain so, unless the S.C. Supreme Court rules the conviction was wrong, or that there is enough evidence to show the witness, who testified in 1977 against McClurkin and DeGraffenreid, lied and himself was the killer.
That witness, Melvin “Smokey” Harris, a teen friend of McClurkin and DeGraffenreid in the 1970s, died in prison in 2015. He had admitted to an unrelated 1993 murder. Harris also claimed in court in 1993 that he murdered Killian.
But McClurkin and DeGraffenreid have not been cleared of the crime.
DeGraffenreid was not at Thursday’s hearing because he is in a medical mental health facility, his lawyer said. DeGraffenreid, also paroled, has claimed for decades that he was wrongfully convicted and a confession he gave in 1977 was coerced and given under, what former Chester sheriff Alex Underwood testified Thursday were, conditions of torture.
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court Justice, wrote in 1990 that DeGraffenreid’s confession came after days of solitary confinement and other duress was used to extort a confession. Marshall wanted the case reviewed. The full U.S. Supreme court upheld the conviction.
Thursday’s hearing was an evidence hearing for McClurkin and Degraffenreid. They have asked the South Carolina supreme court to throw out the convictions.
South Carolina prosecutors from the state Attorney General’s Office have said since 1977, through repeated appeals from both men, that the conviction was proper and the confession was legitimate. Thursday in court, prosecutors again remained steadfast in their position.
Florence County Judge Craig Brown was assigned by the S.C. Supreme Court to hear the evidence and report to the supreme court his findings after Thursday’s hearing. His findings are yet to come.
Still, James McClurkin wants his name cleared of the murder conviction.
Dayne Phillips, McClurkin’s lawyer, asked directly Thursday in court: “Did you kill Mr. Killian?’
“No, sir,” McClurkin replied.
“Were you present when it happened?” Phillips asked.
“No, sir,” McClurkin said.
“Did you have any involvement?” Phillips asked.
“No, sir,” McClurkin testified.
The case remains under scrutiny also because both suspects are Black, and the victim was white in a small Southern town in 1973, testimony showed Thursday. The prosecutors, judge and jury all were white, testimony showed.
“That wasn’t a trial,” McClurkin said Thursday. “That was a lynching.”
Key issue: Harris’ arrest warrant and testimony
Lawyers for McClurkin and DeGraffenreid said Thursday that Harris had been arrested in 1977 in connection with the Killian murder, but was never tried.
Instead, Harris testified against McClurkin and DeGraffenreid. He testified that he saw McClurkin and DeGraffenreid near the crime scene. The two men said during the trial they had alibis and witnesses who could put them with other people outside of Chester when Killian was murdered.
Prosecutors with the 6th Circuit Solicitor’s Office did not disclose to the defense that Harris had been charged, the lawyers said. Harris lied during the trial about being arrested, said Josh Kendrick, lawyer for DeGraffenreid.
Harris’ arrest warrant came to light only after Chester County deputies started a new investigation into the crime in 2016. Deputies found the warrant in the court files, testimony showed.
“This arrest warrant had been pending against Smokey Harris for months (in 1977)...,” Kendrick argued Thursday.
Three suspects
McCurkin said Thursday that when he was charged in early 1977 in connection with the Killian case, he already was in prison for a 1973 robbery and housebreaking. He had been sentenced to 25 years as the alleged ringleader of those crimes. Harris and DeGraffenreid, his friends, received shorter sentences.
Still, McCurkin denied involvement in the Killian case.
“I was out of town,” McClurkin testified.
DeGraffenried’s lawyer, Kendrick, also has said alibi witnesses put DeGraffenreid out of Chester.
The first trial in May 1977 for McClurkin and DeGraffenreid ended in a hung jury. DeGraffenreid’s confession was not allowed because of concerns about whether it was voluntary. Of 12 jurors, 11 wanted to acquit the men but one holdout meant a retrial, testimony showed.
In a second trial in late 1977, the confession was allowed. With the confession that implicated both, and Harris’ testimony, both men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Parole
McClurkin and DeGraffenreid were given parole after former Chester County Sheriff Alex Underwood and sheriff’s office detective Randy St. Clair re-opened an investigation in 2016.
Underwood, the first Black sheriff in Chester County, was sheriff from 2012 until he was indicted in 2019 and convicted in 2021 in federal court on corruption charges. Underwood has not yet been sentenced.
He testified Thursday about how McClurkin’s family asked him to review the case.
“I saw things that just didn’t add up,” Underwood testified Thursday.
Underwood testified that the five days of solitary confinement for DeGraffenreid and conditions used to gain a confession in 1977 amounted to torture.
Underwood said in 2016 he assigned St. Clair, a white detective, to look at the case to avoid negative public perception or inferred bias.
“I didn’t want people to think that the first Black sheriff was letting Black people out of prison,” Underwood testified.
St. Clair, now a city of Chester police officer, testified Thursday that he reviewed the case and believes McClurkin and DeGraffenreid are innocent, and Harris was likely the killer.
At 2016 and 2017 parole hearings for McClurkin and DeGraffenreid, Underwood and St, Clair testified that they believed both men are innocent and should be freed. The parole board agreed.
Prosecutors argue against innocence claims
Killian’s murder went unsolved from 1973 until 1977 when police arrested McClurkin and DeGraffenreid. Police and prosecutors from Chester County who arrested and convicted McCurkin and DeGraffenreid all are now dead.
In cross-examinations of Underwood, St. Clair and McClurkin, Deputy South Carolina Attorney General Don Zelenka said the convictions were solid, and the convictions and confession have held up to decades of judicial scrutiny.
Zelenka also challenged Underwood and St. Clair’s review of the cases. The reviews found no new witnesses or evidence that showed innocence of either man, Zelenka argued.
As for Harris’ claim in 1993 that he was the real killer, Zelenka argued that a South Carolina judge who reviewed that claim in 1993 found it not to be credible, and denied requests from McClurkin and Degraffenreid for a new trial.
McClurkin did admit guilt in 2014 at a parole hearing, Zelenka said in court.
McClurkin said he had been previously denied parole 15 times before that 2014 hearing. He testified he lied in 2014 about being guilty because he did not want to die in prison and would have said almost anything for a chance at release.
“I told them what they wanted to hear,” McClurkin testified.
McClurkin testified that he recanted that confession immediately and maintains his innocence.
What happens now?
Brown said in court Thursday that he will issue a finding of fact in the coming weeks that will be submitted to the S.C. Supreme Court. Then it is likely that the state supreme court will issue a ruling.
Everyone left the courtroom Thursday evening after hours of grueling testimony. One of the people was a S.C. Probation, Parole and Pardon Services agent.
The agent was there because James McClurkin and Ray Charles DeGraffenreid are still on parole.
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