McCrory pardons Chapel Hill man wrongly convicted of murder

CHAPEL HILL LaMonte Armstrong met with Gov. Pat McCrory 11 days ago as the newly lighted Christmas tree twinkled outside on the Capitol lawn.

Carolers sang out melodies of good tidings, and Armstrong, in his ninth month of freedom after a wrongful murder conviction cost him 17 years of his life, took note.

Armstrong, who lives and works in Chapel Hill, was with his lawyers that Friday afternoon elaborating for the governor on the miscarriage of justice that caused him to miss out on many key moments of his 63 years. His daughter, not quite 7 at the time of his imprisonment, blossomed into a woman while he was behind bars. His older son, who was playing college football at the time, matured into the kind of man that Armstrong enjoys being around today.

The father and son were together on Monday morning, sharing a meal at a Bob Evans restaurant between Durham and Chapel Hill, when Armstrongs phone lit on top of the table.

Armstrong looked up from his plate of eggs, sausage and grits toward his son, who was filling up on a plate of pancakes. The number in the phone window was a Charlotte one and Armstrong almost didnt pick up. But on the fourth ring, he answered, and McCrory, the former Charlotte mayor, was on the other end with long-awaited tidings.

He asked me what I was doing and I said I was eating breakfast with my son. I said we were doing a sort of Christmas breakfast, Armstrong said. And he said, OK. What Im about to say will probably make your Christmas even more joyous. And then he said, I just finished signing a document of pardon of innocence for you. And I said to him, Fantastic, governor. Thank you so much.

With that the governors first pardon of his term Armstrong is eligible to file a claim under a North Carolina law that allows compensation of up to $750,000 to persons wrongly convicted of felonies.

Armstrong was wrongfully convicted of murdering an N.C. A&T University professor found dead in her Greensboro home in July 1988. He maintained his innocence throughout from the first time Greensboro police interviewed him to when a Guilford County jury returned a guilty verdict to his arduous appeals of his life sentence.

Duke Universitys Wrongful Convictions Clinic took up Armstrongs case more than seven years ago and helped spur his release in June 2012 with a vacated conviction.

But it was not until March 18 that Armstrong learned the murder case against him had been dismissed. He no longer faced the possibility of another trial or another wrongful conviction. He finally was free of accusations that he had a hand in the fatal stabbing and strangling of Ernestine Compton, a beloved college professor at N.C. A&T.

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McCrory pardons Chapel Hill man wrongly convicted of murder