Was the wrong man jailed for the July 1993 murder of Michael Jordan's father?

The Daily Mail is reporting that Daniel Green, one of the men convicted of killing James Jordan more than 23 years ago, claims that he was the victim of a police cover up which should prove that he was innocent and wrongfully jailed all along.

According to the site, Green's lawyers filed a motion, claiming that James Jordan's murder wasn't a botched carjacking — as widely believed for more than two decades — but instead a drug deal gone wrong. And even more explosive of an allegation is that they claim the drug transaction has ties to the Robeson County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina.

Green's lawyers believe that Larry Demery, the other teen involved in the murder, was ordered to carry out a drug deal by Hubert Larry Deese — a cocaine trafficker who happens to be the illegitimate son of ex-sheriff Hubert Stone.

During the alleged transaction, Demery could have mistaken Jordan's dad for a participant in the drug deal, subsequently shooting and killing the wrong man. Green's lawyers say that when Demery learned about the man he killed, he called Deese on James Jordan's phone.

They further allege that Deese advised Demery to get Green to help dispose of the body. Green's attorneys believe that if a jury hears about the details of the phone call that they may not accept prosecutors' case of the crime being a carjacking.

"If the jury had been made aware of evidence that the Sheriff and those under his command had been actively conspiring with a drug trafficker who had connections to Larry Demery, they would have had ample reason to question the integrity of the entire investigation that identified Daniel Green as the killer," Green's lawyer, Ian Mance, wrote in the motion, as obtained by the Daily Mail. "If the jury had known the Sheriff's Office had a strong motive to conceal evidence of a drug motive, for which there was already some evidence in the record, they would have been less likely to conclude that the murder transpired in the course of a car jacking."

Under a plea deal at the time, Demery originally claimed Green fired the shot that killed Jordan's dad. However, Green didn't plead guilty to the crime, only divulging that he was Demery's accomplice, but not to the murder. 

Both were sentenced to life in prison.

James Jordan was 56.

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