RALEIGH, N.C. — Gov. Roy Cooper is pardoning two men: An Alamance County man who went through three murder trials before being acquitted and a Pitt County pastor who was wrongfully convicted of armed robbery as a teenager, spent nearly a decade in prison, and has spent the rest of his life since then trying to rebuild his reputation — and clear his name.
Mark Crotts was arrested for a 1990 double murder in Alamance County; the Greensboro News & Records reported at the time that the victims were his landlords. He was convicted but that conviction was thrown out after a judicial finding that the government violated his constitutional rights at trial.
