Brothers get $75 million after serving 31 years in prison for crime they didn’t commit
Updated May 15, 2021;
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown spent nearly 31 years in prison for a brutal crime they did not commit one they were convicted of on the basis of confessions that they insisted, for decades, had been coerced.
In a federal courtroom in Raleigh late Friday afternoon, after nearly five hours of deliberation, a jury delivered the half brothers a sense of long-awaited justice.
An eight-person jury awarded McCollum and Brown $31 million each in compensatory damages $1 million for every year they spent in prison after they were wrongfully convicted, twice, of the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Red Springs. McCollum and Brown, both intellectually-disabled with IQs in the 50s, were teenagers when they were charged after they signed confessions they insisted they didn’t understand.
North Carolina jury awards two men wrongfully sent to death row $75M
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2 men wrongfully sent to death row awarded $75M in damages
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