Businesses need correct tax form
Submitted by bniolet on October 5, 2009 - 6:43am.
* State tax officials are scrambling to alert nearly 200,000 businesses how to comply with a sales tax increase that went into effect last month.
Retail businesses began collecting a higher sales tax Sept.1 from shoppers under a tax increase that was passed during the summer as part of the state budget.
But the rush to pass the budget left the N.C. Department of Revenue, which collects the tax, without time to produce new tax forms to reflect the higher tax rate. As a result, businesses in the state were stuck with obsolete tax forms.
The timing couldn't have been worse: All restaurants, mom-and-pop shops, department stores and other retail businesses that charge the sales tax have to file in October to reflect September sales.
Now Revenue Department officials are trying to warn about 180,000 businesses not to use the old tax form. (N&O)
* The state investigator who helped put an innocent man on death row had no regrets about his investigation.
Dwight Ransome locked in on Alan Gell as a suspect in a murder case despite statements from 17 witnesses who saw the murder victim alive after Gell was jailed on unrelated charges. Ransome chose to base a death penalty case on the tales of two drug-abusing 15-year-old girls whose stories changed each time they testified or were interviewed.
Initially, Ransome's lawyer offerred Gell $2,500 to settle a lawsuit over the nine years Gell spent in prison. The SBI and its insurance companies agreed this past spring to pay Gell $3.9 million to settle the case.
Despite the legal fallout, Ransome still works at the SBI. He now is on administrative duty in Raleigh; he is paid an annual salary of $72,849. Taxpayers paid $731,062.40 to defend against the lawsuit. (N&O)
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Gell case will cost state $3.9m
Submitted by bniolet on October 2, 2009 - 7:14am.
* The State Bureau of Investigation has agreed to a $3.9 million settlement with former death row inmate Alan Gell to end his lawsuit accusing the SBI of fabricating evidence and obstructing justice, according to documents made public Thursday.
Officials at the SBI could not cite a bigger settlement made on behalf of the agency. The state also spent $731,062.40 to defend the lawsuit.
Gell, who spent nine years behind bars, said the settlement amount is a concession of his innocence and the SBI's wrongdoing. He was in jail on a car theft charge when the murder for which he was wrongly convicted occurred.
"I see it as an admission of guilt" from the SBI, Gell said in a recent interview.
The settlement was made on behalf of SBI special agent Dwight Ransome. He was the lead investigator into the 1995 killing of Allen Ray Jenkins, a retired truck driver in Aulander, about 120 miles east of Raleigh.
According to a case summary by the agent's own lawyer, Ransome had decided that Gell was guilty early on, despite having statements from 17 independent witnesses who saw Jenkins alive after Gell was jailed on unrelated charges. (N&O)
* Wake County school board elections are officially nonpartisan, but campaign-finance reports on Tuesday's election show much of the cash flowing into the closely watched races breaks along partisan lines.
Candidates who oppose current school board policies are getting money, both directly and indirectly, from a number of Republican public officials and businessmen. Candidates who support current board policies are getting donations from Democratic public officials.
Names such as state Sens. Dan Blue and Richard Stevens and Wake County Commissioners Lindy Brown, Paul Coble, Tony Gurley and Stan Norwalk are some of the people who've donated money to this year's school board candidates. (N&O)
New director of death penalty group
Submitted by ryanteaguebeckwith on January 12, 2009 - 11:39am.
A defense attorney who specializes in death penalty cases is taking the helm at the nonprofit that helps inmates challenge their convictions and looks into complaints of poor prison conditions.
The board of directors for N.C. Prisoner Legal Services hired Mary Pollard to lead the 28-year-old nonprofit. It is based in Raleigh and has a staff of 37, including 16 lawyers, Dan Kane reports.
Pollard may be best known for representing Alan Gell, a death row inmate, who was wrongfully convicted in 1998 of killing a retired truck driver in Bertie County.
She used a new law requiring access to prosecutorial files to find evidence proving that Gell could not have committed the murder. He was acquitted in a second trial.
A Wake Forest University law school graduate, Pollard worked nearly 10 years for the Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice law firm before joining the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation in 2002 as a staff lawyer.
Correction: An earlier version of this post included an inaccurate headline.
Gell's ex-girlfriend denied visits
Submitted by ryanteaguebeckwith on December 27, 2007 - 8:11am.The Department of Correction has denied Alan Gell's former girlfriend and their son permission to visit the former death row inmate in prison.
Gell is back in prison, serving a five-year sentence for taking indecent liberties with a minor. The minor in question is his former girlfriend, Olivia Harris of Ahoskie. She is the mother of Gell's child, 18-month-old Sean Michael Gell, Joe Neff reports.
During the year and a half that Gell spent awaiting trial in the Bertie-Martin Regional Jail, Harris and Sean made weekly visits to see Gell.
After Gell pleaded guilty and was moved to the state prison system, Harris and her son applied for visitation privileges. The Department of Correction turned them down.
More after the jump.
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