After a North Carolina trial judge vacated the convictions of four men involved in the 2002 death of NBA basketball star Chris Paul’s grandfather, state attorneys are now considering options, including an appeal.

According to the Winston-Salem Journal, Judge Broadie filed an order on Friday, citing questionable actions by police, the recanted testimony of a key witness, as well as poor legal representation.

Judge Broadie wrote that DNA profiles “further serve to corroborate Defendants’ assertions that their confessions were false” and that the defendants “were not present at the scene of the crime.” 

In the 2004 and 2005 trials, 14 and 15 years old, Rayshawn Denard Banner, Christopher Levon Bryant, Nathaniel Arnold Cauthen, and Jermal Matthew Tolliver were convicted of murder and second degree murder for the death of Nathaniel Jones, reports AP News. 

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Serving life sentences, brothers Cauthen and Banner were convicted of first-degree murder. Bryant, Tolliver and Dorrell Brayboy were convicted of second-degree murder and were released after serving prison time. 

In 2019, Brayboy was stabbed outside of a Winston-Salem supermarket, he succumbed to his wounds.

Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill was highly displeased with Judge Broadie’s ruling, citing that vacating and dismissing “with prejudice,” would make for a harder appeal. 

The lawyer for Banner and Cauthen, Christine Mumma, executive director of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, a nonprofit that investigates and litigates innocence claims, had this to say about the DAs stance:

“If the General Assembly didn’t want judges to have the authority to dismiss with prejudice, they wouldn’t have given judges that authority,” Mumma stated in an email. 

“They also wouldn’t have passed statutes recognizing if charges are dismissed with prejudice, there’s no right of appeal.”