NC judge in murder trial of James Jordan, father of Michael Jordan, calls for release of convicted murderer Daniel Green

CHICAGO– The North Carolina judge who presided over the 1996 murder trial of James Jordan, the father of NBA great Michael Jordan, petitioned the state parole board Tuesday to release the man he sentenced to life in prison.

The judge, Gregory Weeks, said a forensic blood analyst who investigated the case against Daniel Green failed to disclose a key finding: the fact that a blood-like substance found in the car in which Jordan was killed may not have been his blood at all.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that Jordan was asleep in the passenger seat of his Lexus, parked along Highway 74, when Green walked up to the vehicle and shot him, Weeks wrote in an affidavit submitted to the committee. The argument supported the testimony of their key witness, Larry Demery, Green’s co-defendant, who accused Green of pulling the trigger.

But the analyst never revealed that other forensic tests she performed from the vehicle were negative or inconclusive for blood.

On Tuesday, Weeks told the committee that the omission of these test results — evidence that could have changed the outcome of the trial — has haunted him for nearly three decades, according to several criminal justice advocates present at the proceedings.

After the hearing, attorneys contacted Green, 49, who is serving a life sentence at the Southern Correctional Institution in North Carolina. They told him what Weeks had said.

The fact that the judge who “presided over my trial asked if I would be released on parole is significant,” Green told ABC News in a telephone interview from jail. “It speaks volumes about this case, and I am extremely grateful.”

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The commission is expected to deliberate for at least a month on whether to grant Green parole, according to a spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction.

Weeks declined to comment, saying he will wait for the commission to make a decision.

During the murder trial, prosecutors said Green, then 18, and Demery, his childhood friend, killed Jordan on July 23, 1993, during a botched robbery.

Green told ABC News he was cooking with Demery. Demery told him he was leaving to make a drug deal. Many hours later, Demery returned to the barbecue, visibly shaken. According to Green, Demery asked him for help disposing of a body. Green said he agreed to help Demery but has maintained he never killed Jordan.

Authorities found Jordan’s body less than two weeks later in a South Carolina swamp, 60 miles away from his abandoned Lexus, in Robeson County, North Carolina.

In a letter to the committee, Green said: “Every day I live with the remorse, pain and suffering caused by my youthful decisions. I regret the harm my actions have caused to the Jordan family.”

On Tuesday, Weeks and criminal justice advocates, including the Rev. Thomas Jones, pushed for Green’s release.

“When I heard the judge speak on his behalf, I cried,” Jones said. “I was stunned.”

The judge told the committee that he had presided over many trials, Jones said, but that he had “never been haunted as much as he was haunted by this case.”