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Still guilty Jurors heard nothing new in exclusive Carruth interview
Updated: Friday February 16, 2001 8:38 AM
ATLANTA (CNN/SI) -- Two of the jurors who convicted Rae Carruth of conspiracy to commit murder said they were convinced their verdict was the correct one after watching an exclusive interview between Carruth and CNN/Sports Illustrated on Thursday. The interview with the former Carolina Panthers wide receiver and Leslie Boghosian aired Thursday night on CNN and CNN/Sports Illustrated's Sports Tonight. Jury foreman Clark Pennell and juror Rita Shipp said the interview did not present any new facts to them. "I didn't hear anything that would change my mind, he didn't say anything that I hadn't already thought about," Shipp said. Pennell said he had no regrets about the verdict."I don't have any trouble sleeping at night," he said. During the interview, Carruth said he was not present at the time Cherica Adams was fatally shot in November 1999. He also said he and Adams were little more than sex partners.
"I didn't even know her last name until we went to Lamaze class," Carruth said. Carruth, 27, is serving a sentence at the Nash Correctional Institution in Nash County, about 40 miles east of Raleigh. He was convicted of conspiring to kill Adams, who was pregnant with his son when she was fatally shot. Carruth fled North Carolina after he was charged in Adams' death and was apprehended in Tennessee. Shipp said Carruth's flight was not a major factor in the verdict, but it did not help Carruth's case. "I can understand him being scared," Shipp said. "But it did not make him look good." Carruth was sentenced in January to at least 18 years and 11 months and a maximum of 24 years and four months after being convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, shooting into an occupied vehicle, and using an instrument with the intent to destroy an unborn child. He was acquitted of first-degree murder in the shooting of Adams, who was eight months pregnant, as she drove along a Charlotte street. Prosecutors said Carruth used his vehicle to block Adams' car so a hired gunman could shoot her. Adams, 24, was shot four times in the attack, which prosecutors said Carruth arranged so he could avoid paying child support. Carruth, in the interview, said he was not at the scene of the crime. "I was not there," Carruth said. "I didn't see the shooting. I didn't hear any shots. I can't testify to anything that happened to Cherica on Rae Road." Adams died a month after the shooting. Her son, delivered by emergency Caesarean section, suffers from cerebral palsy. While prosecutors portrayed Adams as Carruth's girlfriend, the inmate disputed that. "As far as Cherica and I are concerned, we never dated," Carruth said in the interview. "We were never boyfriend and girlfriend. ... We slept together. ... There was no conversation." Carruth's attorney, David Rudolf, joined the Sports Tonight show Thursday as well. He said that even though he thought Carruth would have made a "very good witness," Rudolf did not regret not putting Carruth on the stand. "The problem is once you put your client on the stand in a reasonable doubt case is that it longer becomes a reasonable doubt case," Rudolf said. "It becomes a 'do they believe you client or something else' situation. We believed there was reasonable doubt and didn't want to divert attention from the reasonable doubt in the case." During the interview, Carruth recalled that he turned to Rudolf at one point during the trial and said, "Dave, they want to kill me." Rudolf said the statement was made during jury selection as prosecutors sought to impanel a jury that could vote for the death penalty. Asked why he fled Charlotte after Adams died, Carruth, who was found hiding in the trunk of a car outside a West Tennessee motel, said he felt that everyone was against him. "Who was going to speak up for me?" he said. "You have the guys that did it lying. Cherica was there and she's gone. The media had already said, 'This is what happened.' What did I have left?" According to Rudolf, Carruth also said in the interview that he hoped to sit down one day with his brain-damaged son, Chancellor, "and tell him what really happened; ... that he had nothing to do with it." As he did throughout the trial, Rudolf maintained that Carruth was not at the scene of the shooting, but he refused to say where Carruth was. Frank Porter, an attorney for Cherica Adams' father, Jeff Moonie, declined to comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Rae Carruth Murder Trial Archive