At 9:36 p.m. on June 14, 2013, shots were reported being fired near a basketball court in the center of Lumberton, North Carolina.
Officers with the city’s police department responded to the call and searched the area along Peachtree Street next to the court. Near an abandoned house, they found 22-year-old Joshua Council, unconscious and without a pulse. He was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound to the chest a few hours later.
Agents with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) assisted the Lumberton Police Department in the investigation.
John Allen, who was 31 years old and Council’s cousin, told officers that he, Council, and some friends were hanging out at the court. It was already dark, and the court was poorly lit. Allen, who was affiliated with a local gang, told investigators that a white Ford Taurus drove north on Peachtree and pulled up on the grass parking area near the court. The driver stopped and backed up, then started shooting, and then drove off toward Elizabethtown Road. Allen said he could not identify the driver.
Separately, a man named Chris McGirt contacted the police on June 15 and said that a strange-acting man had pulled into his driveway, which was a few blocks from the court, at about 11 p.m. on June 14. The man was driving either a white Taurus or Sable and seemed drunk, McGirt said. He described the man as Black, with a medium build and either a shaved head or very short hair. He also said the man had gold teeth in the front of his mouth.
Also on June 15, Council’s father suggested that the police speak with Shabrea Lowery. According to the police report, the father said he “feels like the girlfriend Brea knows something about his son’s death.”
Police spoke with Lowery on June 16. She initially said she didn’t have any information to share; she had briefly spoken with Council on the day of his death, and they were actually no longer dating. The police gave her a description of the car and the suspect. As she was leaving the interview, according to a police report, Lowery said that those descriptions matched her half-brother’s father, 37-year-old Clarence Roberts. He drove a white Taurus, Lowery said.
In addition, Lowery said, Roberts had showed up at the house she shared with her mother, Kimberly Lowery, Roberts’s son, and others on June 14 at around 9:30-10 p.m. She said Roberts was drunk and acting strange.
Shabrea also said that Roberts was arrested for drunk driving in the early morning of June 15 after a state trooper saw his car in a ditch south of Lumberton. Investigators checked the arrest logs and learned that Roberts was in the Robeson County Jail.
On June 17, officers showed McGirt a photo array that included a picture of Roberts. McGirt said he was “85 percent” sure that Roberts was the man who drove up in his driveway in a white Taurus on the night of the murder.
SBI Special Agent W.T. Brady and Detective Al Collins of the Lumberton Police Department interviewed Roberts on June 19 and June 20. Roberts said he had no involvement with the shooting. He lived in Fayetteville, about 40 miles north and had just started working at a hog farm about halfway between the two cities. He had no cellphone to track his activities, but Roberts said he got off work early that day, around noon, and described an afternoon and evening of drinking as he drove around Lumberton. He said he went by Lowery’s house to see his son and get some rest and didn’t remember driving into the ditch. “I just blacked out,” he said, speculating that somebody might have put something in his drink.
During the interview, the officers pressed Roberts to place himself at the scene of the shooting and questioned him about how he was able to give a detailed description for so much of his day but then appeared to not remember much from the time of the shooting onward. Roberts kept stating he was nearby but never at the court and didn’t interact with anybody there. “I’m going to tell you right now, sir, you can search that car all you want,” he said. “And as a matter of fact, I give you my house number. My wife will tell you, I don’t own no gun at all.”
Between the first and second interviews, police had located another witness. Sheena Britt said that she and a friend had been walking near the basketball court to a convenience store when a white, four-door car swerved in front of them. Britt said the driver was a tall, Black man with gold teeth. She picked Roberts out of a photo lineup.
Roberts was arrested on June 20 and charged with first-degree murder and three additional counts of attempted murder for John Allen, 27-year-old Crystal Allen, and 16-year-old Michael Burgess.
On September 24, 2013, Robeson County District Attorney Luther Britt gave notice that he intended to seek the death penalty against Roberts.
At a hearing on March 6, 2014, Britt outlined the state’s case, including statements that purportedly identified Roberts “to various degrees.”
Roberts’s attorney, Tiffany Powers, urged Judge James Bell of Robeson County Superior Court to reject the request to seek the death penalty.
“There was no one who could say positively that my client was actually the shooter there at the ballpark,” she said. “My client had been in the area in a white car, had been drinking. There’s evidence that my client was at the home of his child’s mother during the time that this occurred, that he was at the home for about 15 minutes, and the home was a far enough distance away that he could not have been at the park at the time that the shooting actually occurred.”
Powers noted the lack of physical evidence connecting Roberts to the crime. Witnesses said the people in the park fired back at the shooter in the white car, but there were no bullet holes in Roberts’s vehicle, she said.
Judge Bell quickly granted Britt’s request.
In North Carolina, defendants facing the death penalty are entitled to two attorneys. After the ruling, Britt began negotiations with Powers and her co-counsel, attorney Carl Ivarsson.
On November 6, 2014, Britt offered to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for a guilty plea and a sentence of life without parole. A year later, on October 19, 2015, Britt enhanced the offer to second-degree murder and a sentencing range of 33 to 40 years in prison. Roberts rejected both deals.
Roberts’s trial in Robeson County Superior Court before Judge James Webb began in April 2017. Britt prosecuted the case.
During jury selection, Britt offered a final plea arrangement to Roberts, allowing Roberts to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and three counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. The manslaughter conviction carried a sentence of 78 months to 106 months in prison. The three assault convictions together carried 30 months to 48 months, giving a total range of 108 months to 154 months, or nine years to just under 13 years. With credit for time served awaiting trial, Judge Webb told Roberts that he could be released from prison in as little as five years.
Roberts declined the offer. “I don’t want no plea,” he said.
Several law-enforcement officers testified about the investigation and the search for evidence at the crime scene. No physical or forensic evidence connected Roberts to the shooting.
Collins, one of the officers who interviewed Roberts, testified that neither Roberts nor anyone else was able to account for the entirety of Roberts’s actions on the night of the shooting. He also said that he did not know of a motive for Roberts and that there was not a witness who said they saw Roberts with a gun.
Collins testified that as his interview with Roberts was ending and he was about to be charged, Roberts asked about Council’s age. Collins said he told Roberts, and that Roberts said, “Tell the family I’m sorry,” and that he began crying.
McGirt testified consistent with his statement to police. He described the driver of the white Taurus in his driveway as a Black man between 5’9” and 6’ tall and about 160-170 pounds, with gold teeth. He testified that Roberts was the man he saw. He testified that he did not see a gun or cellphone during the encounter.
Sheena Britt testified about seeing a man in a white four-door car a few minutes before the shooting. She had selected Roberts from a photo array and said in her statement to police that she was 100 percent certain in her identification other than the fact that Roberts did not have gold teeth in the photo. At the trial, she wavered. “I ain’t 100 percent certain, but it looked like the same person,” she said.
A woman named Whitney Carter testified that Roberts’s car was the vehicle she saw in the vicinity of the basketball court about five minutes before the shooting.
Kimberly and Shabrea Lowery each testified about seeing Roberts at their house around 9:30-10 p.m. on June 14, 2013. The restaurant where Shabrea worked closed at 9, but she said often stayed later because of customers finishing their meals. Both women said Roberts was drunk. Shabrea Lowery said Roberts was subdued and talking low and that she had never seen him with a gun.
Burgess, who had the same gang affiliations as Allen, testified that he saw a white car with primer on the front panel pull up to the parking area near the courts. (Roberts’s car did not have any primer.) He said the man said, “Y’all going to kill me,” twice before someone shot at his car and the man started firing back, Burgess said. He said the man in the car had tattoos on his face and gold teeth. He said he heard shots coming from several different directions but “a lot” came from the white car. At some point, he testified, the man got out of the car.
Burgess was never asked to identify Roberts from a photo array, but prior to the trial, Burgess became acquainted with Roberts when they were both in the Robeson County Jail. “I know he wasn’t the shooter,” Burgess said. “If I could see the man’s face, I could identify the man and say he wasn’t the shooter.”
In his testimony, Allen described the shooting and said that a white Ford Taurus sped off. It was only then, he testified, that he realized Council had been shot. Like Burgess, he did not identify Roberts as the shooter. He described the man in the Ford as Black, about 5’8” or 5’9”, with a muscular build and a bald head. (Roberts is about 6’2” tall.)
The state introduced video recordings of both of Roberts’s custodial interviews. During the interviews, the officers asked Roberts about being detained for a murder years earlier. (He was released when officials learned he was in jail at the time of the crime.) Later, he was arrested on a rape charge and spent three years in jail before that case was dismissed.
In addition, jurors also heard recordings of telephone calls Roberts made from the jail. In one of the calls, a woman suggested that Roberts take a polygraph test. Roberts responded, “They ain’t do none of that.” In another call, a woman suggested that Roberts was responsible for being in this situation. The woman said she had heard “Them other dudes were trying to tell you to go home, but you wouldn’t leave.’’
After the state rested, Roberts’s attorneys successfully moved to dismiss the assault charges against Burgess and Crystal Allen.
Ronnie Roberson testified as a defense witness. He lived across the street from the basketball court, and his home surveillance system included a camera trained on that area. He said that between 9-10 p.m. on June 14, he heard a lot of noise coming from the court, and he flipped his television to watch the surveillance feed. He said he saw a black car drive up to the court and sit there for a while. Then he heard shots and saw the car head east. He said that after the black car left, a white car pulled up. Roberson also testified that he did not hear more than one gun being fired.
Michael Gurdziel, a forensic scientist at the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, testified that no gunshot residue was found in Roberts’s car or on his clothing. During cross-examination, he said the lack of residue did not rule out the possibility that someone fired a weapon.
Eric McQueen testified as a partial alibi witness. He said he and Roberts were together most of the afternoon and evening of June 14, drinking heavily and eventually ending up at an illegal drink house about five blocks south of the basketball court. McQueen said Roberts was supposed to take him home but left without him. McQueen said he saw Roberts pull out of the driveway and head east, away from the basketball court. He said he heard shots 15-30 seconds later and that it would have been impossible for Roberts to have driven to the court in that amount of time.
On May 5, 2017, the jury convicted Roberts of second-degree murder and misdemeanor assault. He was sentenced to 25 to 31 years in prison.
Roberts appealed, arguing that Judge Webb erred in allowing the jury to hear the jail calls and the portions of the video recordings where he and the officers discussed his prior arrests. He said the jail calls contained hearsay evidence and the information about his prior arrests was prejudicial and inadmissible.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction on November 5, 2019. The court said that Judge Webb had ruled within his discretion that the exclusion of this evidence wouldn’t have made a difference because there was “overwhelming evidence” of Roberts’s guilt.
While Roberts’s appeal was pending, he sought a review of his case through the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, which investigates post-conviction claims of factual innocence. During the next six years, the commission’s staff reviewed the evidence and interviewed many of the original witnesses.
On November 17, 2022, Burgess gave a deposition to a staff attorney with the commission. The attorney asked Burgess if he knew the real shooter’s identity. Burgess said he couldn’t disclose that information. The attorney then showed Burgess a photo of a man known as D.S. who at one time had been considered an alternate suspect. Burgess responded: “Man, come on, now. Y’all know better than that... I could be in the dirt for the rest of my life.”
The attorney paused the deposition, and then resumed it on November 22, 2022. After the deposition ended, according to an affidavit from the attorney, Burgess said: “I feel a lot safer without the video camera on me ... It was D.S.”
On August 17, 2023, the commission voted 6-2 to refer Roberts’s case to a three-judge panel, which would make the final determination. After leaving the district attorney’s office, Britt had served as the defense attorney representative on the commission, but his term expired before the 2023 vote.
Reid Cater and Cecilia Reyna represented Roberts in the hearings before the judicial panel. In his summary of the case, Cater wrote: “Mr. Roberts’s only connection to these events is that he happened to be driving a white car in the area of a shooting around the time that it occurred. There was no motive even alleged by the State at trial, nor even any connection between Mr. Roberts and the individuals at the park who were significantly younger than him. No forensic evidence tied him to the scene. He was never seen with a gun. No gun was found on his person or his car. No casings were found. Mr. Robert’s clothing and car tested negative for gunshot residue. Of the two eyewitnesses that testified for the State at trial, one definitively said that the shooter was not Mr. Roberts and the other did not identify Mr. Roberts in court and gave detectives a description of a significantly shorter man.
Cater also noted that Roberts had consistently asserted his innocence and rejected plea offers. “Had Mr. Roberts accepted that plea, he would have already been released,” Cater wrote.
On April 16, 2025, the judicial panel ruled that Roberts was factually innocent, vacating his conviction and dismissing his charges. He was released from prison that day. Because of the judicial ruling, he became eligible for state compensation for his wrongful conviction. Roberts became the 16th person exonerated based on the work of the innocence commission and the first who did not receive a unanimous recommendation for referral to the judicial panel.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 05-05-2025
Last Update Date: 05-05-2025
