Good Morning! It’s Monday. Hope everyone had a great weekend. Tell us how you spent your Mothers' Day in the comment section below.

Today as you get back to work, the weatherman says it will be partly cloudy with a high of 81.

Here's what is brewing in the news this morning:

Prosecutors would limit access to innocence panel

Raleigh’s News & Observer is reporting that prosecutors across the state have mounted an effort to block defendants from appealing to the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission.

The state agency was established in 2006 to examine claims of innocence. If the prosecutors have their way, a bill pending would prevent those who pleaded guilty from applying to the commission for help.

Peg Dorer, executive director of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, told the N&O that prosecutors don't want these cases coming back up, saying defendants knew what they were getting into when they accepted plea deals.

Meanwhile, some defendants who insist they are innocent say they were railroaded into plea deals, often times by their own lawyers, because they were terrified a jury would sentence them to death.

More than half of all murder charges were resolved by plea deals last year. Less than 2 percent went to trial. The mechanism is so vital to move cases through the courts that higher courts have sanctioned pleas in which the defendant never admits guilt. Alford pleas allow a defendant to say it's in his best interest to plead, even if he maintains innocence.

Nationally, nearly 25 percent of defendants later exonerated by DNA evidence initially pleaded guilty or offered police incriminating statements or a confession, according to the Innocence Project in New York, which has studied the cases.

"The innocence commission is a very, very unique entity, and it should not be used as a fail-safe for all the other problems in our system," Dorer told the News & Observer. "If they are just going to start picking up all the cases that fall through the cracks, well, that's not their purpose."

What do you think? Should those who plead guilty to a crime automatically lose the right to apply to the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission? Tell us your answer in the comment section below.

Read more at the News & Observer.

A Mothers’ Day nightmare ends well

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police this morning announced good news concerning a Qcity mom who went missing over the weekend.

Patrice Dianne Johnson, 51, was found safe and sound and reunited with her family.

Her daughter had dropped her off Friday at the Charlotte Public Library's main branch uptown. But when the daughter went back to pick up her mom, Johnson was nowhere to be found.

Police did not say what happened to Johnson.

At home with Osama

Over the weekend, home videos and propaganda tapes of Osama bin Laden were released. Footage shows the terrorist leader in an unflattering light, as the U.S. government works to shatter the image he worked so hard to craft for himself.

"This shows the reality. This man is not a fighter. This man is not carrying his AK-47. He is an individual that is isolated, living with women and children," 40-year CIA veteran Charlie Allen told ABC News.

One soundless home video shows him sitting in the floor wrapped in a brown blanket stroking his gray beard with one hand and flicking back and forth with a remote control watching what appears to be news footage of himself.

Read more and watch videos here.

*** This is your chance to speak out. Tell us what’s brewing in your mind this morning.
 

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