My name is Daniel Andre Green. For thirty years, every day of my incarcerated life has been spent struggling to prove that I didn’t murder James Jordan.

Last week I filed motions, briefs, and exhibits in Robeson County Superior Court in Lumberton, NC that demonstrate that even before the trial ended, the jury memorialized their finding that they did not all believe that I kiIIed Mr. Jordan. The significance of this finding by the jury is that, by law, my conviction of felony murder was NEVER valid. The following explains why it was ineffective assistance of counsel for my lawyers not to have filed a motion to set the verdict aside, and why this trial error, and others, warrant a new trial.

WHAT IS FELONY MURDER?

According to UNC– Chapel Hill Law professor, Jessica Smith, who Robeson County Senior Resident Judge, Frank Floyd, described as the North Carolina’ legal communities’ “guru” a person is guilty of felony murder when a jury unanimously finds, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they (1) kiIIed (2) a living human being (3) while robbing them.

THE JURY SAID THE STATE DID NOT PROVE THAT I KILLED JAMES JORDAN.

Gregory Weeks, the judge in my trial, who has since relinquished his law license in protest of the systemic corruption in the criminal justice system, crafted a special verdict sheet that the jury used to specify their whole verdict. The judges’ questions elicited written responses by the jury wherein they acknowledged that they did NOT unanimously find that I killed, attempted to kill, nor intended to kill the victim. Remember, ALL twelve jurors had to conclude that I was guilty of each and every element of felony murder to convict me, including, obviously, the killing element.

WHY DIDN’T MY LAWYERS RAISE THIS ISSUE DURING TRIAL OR ON DIRECT APPEAL?

I don’t know. But because my motion for a new trial has been pending for 23 years I can, and have, amended and supplemented it to claim that both the Robeson County Public Defender’s Office, the court appointed trial lawyer and the North Carolina Appellate Defenders Office were ineffective in their representation of me for not filing a motion to set aside the verdict when they were my lawyers twenty three years ago.

WHAT DOES THE STATE SAY ABOUT THIS?

Unfortunately, to our detriment, a prosecutor’s value as ministers of justice is superseded by the value they build by convicting defendants at all cost, so, the State has confused the issues in their response by accusing me of arguing that the evidence wasn’t sufficient to convict me.

ACTING IN CONCERT

My argument is that the jury did not unanimously convict me of killing Mr. Jordan. The State argued and proposed that the Court sign an order ruling that “the law is clear that a conviction for felony murder may be based on an acting in concert theory”. It’s an irrelevant argument. Acting in concert is a common law concept. In plain language, it means that if two or more people make a concerted effort to commit a crime, each one is responsible for the actions of another because they are moving with one purpose. If the state had put on any evidence that Demery killed James Jordan, the Court would have had to instruct the jury that if they believed he or I killed Mr. Jordan while acting in concert, they could convict me. Instead, they made a deal with the devil.

THE STATE’S DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

Knowing that a house divided against itself can’t stand, the State chose to falsely present Larry Demery as the embodiment of truth. The prosecutor, Luther Johnson Britt, intentionally waived the opportunity to put on evidence that Demery killed James Jordan, although he had the evidence to do so. Demery’s plea bargain was contingent upon him testifying “truthfully” in order for Demery to receive the benefit of his deal. If Mr. Britt had put on evidence that Demery lied, the judge would’ve been forced to nullify Demery’s plea agreement and Demery would’ve had no incentive to lie under oath for the State.

Demery was the only person who testified that I was involved in James Jordan’s murder. He never would’ve told that lie if the police hadn’t lied to him and convinced him that I lied and said I witnessed him killing James Jordan. Using the dialectical method of good cop/bad cop the police threatened him with the death penalty by a “needle up your ass son!” and begged him to not let me blame him and to “help yourself son!” They told him what to say. They even wrote his confession out.

He was an eighteen-year-old kid who didn’t know that by him telling them what they wanted him to say, that he and I robbed James Jordan and that I killed him, he had just confessed to felony murder. Like most people he didn’t know that you are guilty of murder if you rob someone, and they are killed by another. By the time he found out he couldn’t back out, they already had his false confession recorded.

Over the next two years they met with him, drugged him, and allowed him to go home to eat with his family. Even after his plea bargain was adjudicated by the court and based on his first version, accepted by the judge, they helped him modify his confession to fit the evidence they had and the fraudulent scientific evidence they thought they had successfully manufactured.

As the prosecutor admitted to a reporter, if not for his “cooperation” he would have likely received the death penalty by that needle up his ass. What would your kid do in the same predicament?

PAWNS IN THE GAME

The States strategy of validating Demery’s credibility to legitimize his perjury as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was necessary to gain a conviction.

It was the strategy of a chess master playing a game where truth, justice, and the lives of all the people negatively affected by the politicization and monetization of Michael Jordan’s celebrity and his father’s murder were, and still are, treated as nothing more than expendable pawns.

I have lost loved ones, and decades in prison with this scarlet letter on my back. The whole nation has suffered as a consequence of the law this case was used to pass – the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The same crime bill that President Clinton, President Biden, Senator Jim Clyburn and Senator Bernie Sanders have all apologized for.

Yet, there were multiple flaws in the States strategy. One of these flaws is that the State assumed a heavier burden of proof by binding themselves to the narrative that they, Demery, and his attorneys crafted. By law, the jury couldn’t convict me of felony murder unless all twelve jurors found me guilty of robbing James Jordan AND shooting him myself. The judge was constrained by the States strategical choices and by the applicable State and Federal Constitutional law and by North Carolinas statutory law. He had to instruct the jury that to find me guilty of murder they had to find that I killed James Jordan and robbed him.