The News & Observer has produced an outstanding 4 part series, "Time of Death," about a wrongful conviction. The introduction states:

Allen Ray Jenkins was murdered in Bertie County in April 1995. Three years later, a petty drug dealer, Alan Gell, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to die. He is now on Death Row at Central Prison.

There is a problem. A wealth of evidence indicates that Gell was in jail when Jenkins was killed. Some of the evidence was suppressed by police and prosecutors. Some was simply not pursued by defense lawyers who put on a hurried and haphazard case.

Like most people on Death Row, Gell insists he is innocent. Gell, however, may well be telling the truth. This is his story.

On Monday, a Bertie County Superior Court judge threw out his conviction and ordered a new trial after finding that the state had failed to turn over evidence of his innocence to the defense.