Two half brothers from North Carolina who served 31 years in prison for a rape and murder they did not commit have been awarded $31 million each in compensatory damages — $1 million for every year they spent locked up after they were wrongfully convicted.
After four days of testimony, an eight-person federal jury in Raleigh also granted Henry McCollum and Leon Brown $13 million in punitive damages, on top of a $9 million settlement from the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office, one of the defendants named in the civil suit, according to the News & Observer.
The total payout of $75 million is believed to be the largest amount ever awarded for a wrongful conviction in the state’s history.
The men, both Black with intellectual disabilities, were teenagers when they were convicted of the brutal 1983 slaying of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in Red Springs.
After their first trial, both men were sentenced to death, and at age 16 Brown became North Carolina’s youngest death row inmate but he was later re-sentenced to life in prison.
“I thank God,” said McCollum, who just years ago had become the longest-serving inmate on North Carolina’s death row, according to the News & Observer. “I’ve got my freedom,” he said. “There’s still a lot of innocent people in prison today. And they don’t deserve to be there.”
Over decades, attorneys for the men found evidence that law enforcement officials coerced their confessions, suppressed and fabricated evidence, and sat on evidence that clearly implicated another suspect.
New DNA evidence ultimately proved that a convicted murderer named Roscoe Artis was actually responsible for the crime, the News & Observer reported.
A judge overturned their convictions in 2014, and they were released from prison. The following year, Gov. Pat McCrory granted them full pardons and each man received $750,000 for the time they served.
After three decades, however, the men began pursuing a federal civil rights case in the matter, the final chapter in the case that ended last Friday after the jury deliberated for five hours.
Brown and McCollum appeared outside the courthouse and both were in tears as they embraced the team of attorneys who fought for years on their behalf.
“The first jury to hear all of the evidence — including the wrongly suppressed evidence — found Henry and Leon to be innocent, found them to have been demonstrably and excruciatingly wronged, and has done what the law can do to make it right at this late date,” said Elliot Abrams, one of the attorneys from the Washington, D.C., firm Hogan Lovells.
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