When the wrongly convicted are freed, where do they go? This NC farm may have answer.
Ten years ago, Mandy Locke reported on the cases of the wrongly convicted. Now, she’s helping to house them.
Locke, 45, owns Second Act Farm in Alamance County. A former reporter for The News & Observer, she left the paper in 2017 and soon traded her downtown Raleigh life for a slower pace. But as Locke and her husband, Alex Granados, enjoyed their 22 acres of farmland, complete with donkeys, goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys, a friend from her journalism days brought Locke’s old work back to the forefront.
Chris Mumma, 62, is the executive director of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence. She met Locke when Locke was a self-described “cub reporter” writing about a man whose conviction in the rape of a 12-year-old girl was overturned after 18 years in prison. DNA evidence showed the man, one of Mumma’s clients, was not the attacker.
Over the years, Mumma’s cases kept piling up, and the pair continued to cross paths.
“She was a very, very good investigative reporter,” Mumma recalled. “There was a lot of interaction, exchanging ideas and her doing research, and we developed a friendship through that.”
Over a decade later, that friendship has culminated in a new collaboration: two planned tiny homes on Locke’s property, each hosting an exoneree found by Mumma.
‘I’m a big believer in serendipity’
Mumma started in corporate finance before heading to law school and clerking for former N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr.
In nearly 20 years of innocence work, including nine exonerations and a key role in establishing the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, she has become familiar with the struggles of post-release life.
“We’ve lost two exonerees just to suicide, and all of the exonerees that we have basically become like my children,” she said. “I’ve had several of them live with me for months after they get out.”
In addition to the normal transitional challenges faced by any formerly incarcerated person, there is an additional layer of complication for the wrongly convicted, Mumma said.
“While they’re in prison for something they didn’t do, they are suffering their own pain, and then they’re seeing the pain in the eyes of their family members,” she explained. “A lot of them just can’t deal with the guilt of what their family is going through in addition to what they’re going through.”
Typical reentry programs are designed for those who were not wrongly convicted, so exonerees often don’t want to participate, Locke said.
“I think people expect them to have a level of gratitude, and they are on an emotional rollercoaster that is filled with complex emotions,” she said.
And so the problem of reentry for North Carolina exonerees was one the two women struggled with – until Mumma got an idea, not long after Locke moved to her farm.
It started with Ireland. Through research for her work, Mumma stumbled across The Sunny Center, a home run by a wrongfully convicted couple who began hosting exonerees in 2012.
That seemed like a great concept to her, but she believed the exonerees she worked with needed a space in nature, and she didn’t have that. Locke’s available land didn’t “perk,” or drain quickly enough to hold the required septic tank.
Then six acres went up for sale on the property bordering Locke’s, and Mumma knew it was time to act. Locke got the soil tested.
“It had the capacity to perk for two tiny houses,” Locke recounted. “And so I said, ‘Chris, let’s do it.’”
The decision came roughly a year after the December 2020 death of Joseph Sledge, one of Mumma’s most well-known clients. Sledge had received $2.9 million from the state and local entities that had played a role in his wrongful conviction. As part of his final wishes, he left an undisclosed portion to the Center on Actual Innocence.
As Mumma sees it, everything fell into place.
“I’m a big believer in serendipity,” she said. “Things happen for a reason.”
What to expect
One of the tiny homes will be 625 square feet and fully ADA-compliant, and the other will be 825 square feet and not ADA-compliant. One house will host an exonoree, Locke said, while the other is intended for members of the exoneree’s support system, like a job counselor or a family member, or possibly a second exoneree if there are two at once.
Locke helped design the homes after researching factors in healing from trauma. Planned features include:
The bedroom interior of the ADA-compliant home being designed so it cannot be seen from the other house
A space for gardening
Abundant natural light
A back deck on one home and an L-shaped front porch on the other
Windows looking onto the forest
The center will pay the roughly $500,000 cost of building the homes, fundraising and using the money Sledge left behind, Locke said. The price tag could have been much larger – the contractors are donating half of their time, and many community members have offered to donate supplies or labor, she said.
“The rural areas in the state get a bad reputation for being really strident or judgmental, but by and large, the people that we’ve met that we’ve shared this project with have really wanted to help,” Locke said. “It’s just been really heartwarming.”
The homes will be open to any exonerees in North Carolina, though there will be some rules. Residents won’t be able to use illegal drugs in the homes and will sign a code of conduct, according to Locke.
The women anticipate the homes will be completed by the new year, though who the first residents will be will depend on the justice system; the clients Mumma has in mind have not yet been exonerated. She has seven cases pending hearings before the end of the year, with another dozen she expects to be heard over the next year-and-a-half.
She’d be happier if she didn’t have any cases at all.
“I guess my dream would be that one day, I’m out of a job, and one day we don’t need homes for reentry of people who get incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit,” Mumma said.
But until that day, Locke’s property will provide a soft place to land.
“You can feel it in your bones when you come onto the farm – the air feels cleaner, the sun feels brighter,” she said. “There’s something just really special and healing about this place.”
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