By Titan Barksdale
The News Observer
RALEIGH, N.C. — The State Bureau of Investigation said Thursday that it will look into perjury claims against a Burke County sheriff’s deputy whose testimony helped send an innocent man to death row for nearly 14 years.
Dennis Rhoney, formerly of the Hickory Police Department, has been suspended from his current job while the SBI investigates the possibility that he lied in his testimony against Glen Chapman, who was convicted in 1994 of murdering Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Yvette Conley in Hickory.
Chapman was released from Central Prison on Wednesday after the Catawba County district attorney dismissed the murder charges, basing his action on findings made by Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin in an order last year.
Rhoney was named in Ervin’s order, which threw out Chapman’s conviction and granted him a new trial. Ervin’s 186-page order said evidence that proved Chapman’s innocence was withheld and Chapman’s trial attorneys didn’t represent him properly. The charges were dismissed when the district attorney found insufficient evidence for a retrial.
Attempts to reach Rhoney were unsuccessful.
Rhoney testified that he had given the prosecution all the information that might have been used to clear Chapman of murder when, in fact, he withheld evidence, Ervin’s order says.
Rhoney did not tell prosecutors that a witness viewing a police lineup picked a man who wasn’t Chapman as the person he saw set a June 1992 fire at the house where Ramseur’s body was found, Ervin’s order says.
Burke Sheriff John McDevitt said Rhoney has a clean record in his Burke County job. But he said he takes Ervin’s findings seriously.
Rhoney “has done nothing in his work performance that would have indicated anything in the nature that Judge Ervin found in his ruling,” McDevitt said. “At the same time, Judge Ervin is a highly respected judge here, and I respect his opinion.”
Chapman, who had maintained his innocence from the start, said Wednesday that he harbored no resentment toward Rhoney. But Chapman’s attorneys called for an investigation, saying Rhoney’s credibility as a witness in any case is in question.
Frank Goldsmith, a lawyer who has been handling Chapman’s case, said the suspension was appropriate. The investigation should not be limited to Rhoney’s testimony, he said.
“The matter of his fitness as a law enforcement officer should be investigated,” Goldsmith said. “It’s greater than what he said on the stand.”
Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the SBI, said the investigation will focus on the claims of perjury and obstruction of justice against Rhoney.
Rhoney began working in Burke County in 2004 as a jailer and then a patrolman before his current job as a desk sergeant, fingerprinting offenders.
It is likely that Rhoney testified in criminal cases in Burke County, but the Sheriff’s Office does not keep a record of those cases, McDevitt said.
Chapman was on death row for almost 14 years.
Copyright 2008 The News & Observer