CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A McDowell County man has plans to marry his girlfriend, move to North Carolina and write a book now that he’s free after spending more than 14 years in prison for crime he did not commit.
Charles Jason Lively, 42, was released from prison following a hearing Wednesday in Mercer County Circuit Count during which his 2006 first-degree murder conviction for the 2005 death of Ebb Keister “Doc” Whitley, 70, of Iaeger, was vacated.
“It’s almost like a dream,” Lively told the Bluefield Daily-Telegraph.
Attorneys with the West Virginia Innocence Project got involved in Lively’s case in 2017 after years of advocacy from Lively, his mother and his fiancée.
“Jason is a very articulate, very good advocate for himself,” said Melissa Giggenbach, program director for the West Virginia Innocence Project in West Virginia University’s College of Law, during an appearance on Thursday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
Whitley, a doctor in Iaeger, former president of the McDowell County Commission and past member of the state House of Delegates, died from smoke inhalation and burns in March 2005 in a house fire.
Lively was later found guilty of setting that fire using some kind of flammable liquid.
Two investigators with the West Virginia Fire Marshal’s Office testified during Lively’s trial that two fires had been set in Whitley’s home.
New analysis, though, since the conviction of Lively, who said he was in Wyoming County at the time of the fire, showed a different cause.
“It was actually an electrical fire that happened in the subflooring (of Whitley’s home, between the 2nd floor and the ceiling of the 1st floor),” Giggenbach said.
“Arson is one of those forensic sciences that keeps evolving and so, often in our clinic, what we’re seeing are cases where forensic science is used to convict people and then the science, because it’s science, changes and evolves and gets better and gets more precise.”
She said that was the case for Lively.
The vacating of the convictions were part of a plea agreement that required Lively to enter pleas, what were Kennedy pleas with no admission to guilt, to several misdemeanor charges, including trespassing.
Lively had been serving his sentence at Mount Olive Correctional Complex, a maximum security prison, in Fayette County.
“He had a rough time in prison,” Giggenbach said. “When you’re wrongfully convicted, it’s not easy to be locked up. As a matter of fact, when he came to this court hearing it was the first time he had been out of prison in eight years and out of solitary (confinement).”
For more on the West Virginia Innocence Project, click HERE.
Melissa Giggenbach, Program Director WV Innocence Project WVU College of Law, joins @HoppyKercheval to talk about how a McDowell County man has been freed after 15 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. WATCH: https://t.co/wkudfIRZCB pic.twitter.com/wlRW5AJqfi
— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) September 24, 2020