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RALEIGH -- A group of attorneys, exonerees and even a victim are coming forward to say one North Carolina man deserves a new hearing to discuss race in his death row conviction.

Melvin White is awaiting execution after being found guilty of first-degree murder but some say racial bias may have played a role in his conviction.

“How did I get it wrong? How did this mistake happen?”

Those were the questions rape survivor Jennifer Thompson says she used to ask herself. Today, she can stand side-by-side with the man she accused of raping her in 1984. She says she was positive it was Ronald Cotton's face she was looking into while being assaulted. Cotton was then sentenced to life in prison plus 54 years.

But after he spent over a decade behind bars, everything changed.

“It would be 11 years, in the summer of 1995, when a DNA test was run,” said Thompson. “And standing in my kitchen they said to me, 'Jennifer there is a problem. We made a mistake, we were wrong, it was never Ronald Cotton who raped you.'”

Today, Cotton is a free man. So is Darryl Hunt, who after his 19 years in prison, was released after DNA evidence proved he didn't do it.

“If one juror on my trial had voted the other way, I would have been executed before DNA came out in 1994, and I am completely innocent," Hunt said.

It is cases like these that led a group of attorneys to come together to file a “friend of the court” brief in support of current death row inmate Melvin White. They say one of their top concerns is problems of false or exaggerated testimony recently uncovered at the state crime lab.

“And they just want to come in there because they have a badge,” says Innocence and Justice Clinic co-director Mark Rabil, “and they carry a gun and say 'I looked at it, this is the way it is, don't ask me any questions' That is their attitude.”

Since 1973, there have been seven people exonerated from death row. Six of them were minorities and all of them had been convicted of crimes against whites.

“And since human beings are flawed, they have conscious and unconscious racial biases,” said Carol Turowski, co-director of the Innocence and Justice Clinic. “Do we really want a flawed system like that to go forward in executing individuals?”

Cotton he says he has forgiven his accuser that helped put him behind bars, but believes the justice system can do better.

“I just wish that things like this didn't happen to people,” said Cotton. “But it does. People make mistakes.”

A judge in Craven County will determine if Melvin White will get a new hearing based on the brief being filed.