Posted on 09/09/2015 11:51:57 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown served more than three decades behind bars for the 1983 murder of an 11-year-old Red Springs girl that DNA has proven they didn't commit. McCollum spent most of those nearly 31 years on death row.
Just over a year ago, on Sept. 3, 2014, the mentally impaired half-brothers emerged from prison as free men. Earlier this month, the state of North Carolina awarded them $750,000 each for the time they spent wrongly incarcerated - the maximum payout allowed under state law.
That payout, awarded Sept. 2 at a hearing in Raleigh, averages out to roughly $24,193 a year.
"I felt good about it," McCollum said this week from his sister's home. "But it can't compare to 30 years, 11 months and 7 days of my life in prison. But it helps." Their lawyer, Patrick Megaro, said it doesn't help enough.
That's one of the reasons he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Aug. 31 in the Eastern District of North Carolina. The defendants in the suit are Robeson County, the town of Red Springs "and essentially all the police officers who abused their authority for causing this conviction," he said.
The lawsuit names Robeson County Sheriff Kenneth Sealey and members of the Red Springs Police Department, the State Bureau of Investigation and the Robeson County Sheriff's Office who investigated Sabrina Buie's murder in 1983. Sealey was a Red Springs police detective at the time. The lawsuit also states that as the current elected sheriff, he is the "successor-in-interest'' to the sheriff in office in 1983.
An individual cannot sue the state in federal court, Megaro said. The only route for a civil rights violation in federal court is to sue the individuals and municipality, should a claim be made against a municipality. The county also is considered a municipality.
It could take years for the lawsuit to be resolved, Megaro said.
"The $750,000, to me, is a good start," he said, "but I don't think that adequately compensates them for 31 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. The best years of their lives were taken away. They bare severe emotional scars and psychological injuries from a crime they didn't commit." McCollum, who is 51, appears to have made the adjustment to life outside the prison walls.
"He's OK," Geraldine Brown said of her brother, who sat nearby during an interview from her home.
McCollum lives with his sister and her family outside Eastover . He answers questions in a calm, soft-spoken manner, rocking gently at times from an easy chair.
"I already adjusted," he said. "I adjusted quicker than I thought I would. There are still things for me to learn."
The lawsuit says both men were bullied and attacked in prison.
Brown, who is 47, is going through hard times trying to make the transition. He suffers from extreme mental health problems and was declared mentally incompetent last week in Cumberland County court, Megaro said.
Brown developed severe and permanent mental illness as a result of his incarceration, the lawsuit states.
"I was more stronger than my brother," McCollum said. "I minded my business, and I showed respect around people. I got along in prison."
According to the lawsuit, Brown was sexually assaulted by inmates.
The Fayetteville Observer does not identify victims of sexual assault, but Megaro told the Associated Press that Brown and his family were willing to make the information public to show how he suffered.
Geraldine Brown said her brother Leon confided to her that he was physically abused numerous times behind bars, usually for trying to preach to others. "He liked doing that preaching," she said.
On Monday, Leon Brown was placed back in the psychiatric ward at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center after a brief return to her home, she said. She said he was "acting up." Brown darted away during a weekend visit to the arcade at Fun Fun Fun.
Geraldine Brown is his legal guardian.
"He's trying to make it. It's hard for him. I feel bad that happened to him," McCollum said, referring to the alleged abuse that Brown suffered behind bars. "That could happen to anybody who comes out of prison if you ain't strong enough."
Megaro said the federal civil rights lawsuit is intended "to hold those responsible who abuse their authority and took advantage of two mentally disabled kids. That's what they were at the time - kids."
"It was done in order to simply close out the case and get a conviction and death sentence, and slap each other on the backs and say they got the bad guy when they didn't,'' he said.
"These guys were actually on death row and facing the gas chamber."
Patrick Pait, the county attorney in Robeson County, declined comment. He said it's the county's policy not to comment on ongoing cases. Sealey and the Red Springs town manager did not return calls seeking comment.
McCollum and Brown did a stretch of five years together on death row in Central Prison in Raleigh. In 1992, Brown was taken off death row after a new trial. He was convicted of rape in that trial, but not murder, and received a life sentence. McCollum was the state's longest-serving death row inmate before he was released from Central Prison.
"For 31 years, no one has held them to task," Megaro said of county authorities and others in the case. "No one held them accountable for what they've done. By the grace of God, they weren't executed."
Still in their teens, Brown and McCollum confessed to taking part in the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in a soybean field near her home in rural Robeson County. In the courtroom, their lawyers described them as scared teens with low IQs, and said investigators berated them and fed them details about the crime before they signed confessions.
McCollum was 19 at the time; Brown was 15.
Decades later, the forensics evidence cleared the men.
The DNA testing of a cigarette butt from the crime scene didn't match either one of them, and fingerprints on a beer can weren't theirs, either. No physical evidence connected McCollum and Brown to the crime.
Instead, DNA on the cigarette pointed to Roscoe Artis, who had a long history of assaulting and raping women. Artis is serving life in prison for the murder of Joann Brockman, 18.
Brockman was killed in a similar fashion to Sabrina Buie about a month after Sabrina was found dead in September 1983.
Reflecting on the large chunk of life he missed thanks to a miscarriage of justice, McCollum said he probably would have had a family. He said he may have joined the military.
He plans to go to school in January and take up a trade. He's not sure what it will be or where he'll take classes. He wants to learn how to drive and take a trip to Florida.
Gov. Pat McCrory issued pardons for both men on June 5.
As for the compensatory $750,000 that's coming his way, McCollum said he wants to buy a home.
A brick home, he added, like his sister's.
"I'd rather be in a private place," said McCollum, slightly rocking in that cushioned chair. "Too much drama in the city."
Geraldine Brown said Leon's money is going to be set up to take care of him. In the meantime, she is looking for a long-term care facility for him where he could get "full treatment and the care he needs to try to bring him back to life.''
It’s cases like this that made me no longer support death penalty. Our standards are too low.
If they'd been found innocent, yes. They were politically exonerated by "a somebody", not "found innocent" following a new trial. Criminal lawyers' Project Innocence means to take down what has been long-studied and fair in our system—which overwhelmingly shields the guilty.
The attorney will probably collect attorney fees in the 42 USC 1983 suit since the law expressly provides for them. They can collect fees from the government since the various state actors admitted they engaged in deprivation of rights, abuse of power, and a gross miscarriage of justice. Most cases you see that shock the public conscience and invoke the reaction of many posters on this thread are, like here, constitutional/civil rights violations. Those things should never have happened in the first place, hence, attorneys get paid to fix it.
Me too. I say DNA can only prove guilt, not innocence. Someone other that them left the cigarette and beer can behind, that does not prove that the two men were not there, just that they did not leave that DNA behind.
The DNA found on the cigarette butt at the scene would not necessarily point to their innocence EXCEPT for the fact that it belonged to Artis Roscoe, who raped several women, and raped and killed an 18 y.o. girl in the same way that Sabrina Buie was killed.
Given that, the odds are very much in favor of the Browns being innocent.
You cannot begin to compensate for so many years taken away from them. Five or ten years, maybe. Thirty, no.
That’s what I thought initially, but see post 26.
Compare what these guys got to what the average family of a murder victim gets when the perp was put back on the street through a warped technicality or simply because it is government policy to refuse to enforce our borders.
Consider that the beer can and cigarette butt may have been the “evidence” pointed to to place the two men at the scene. (I say may because this is speculation)
If so, then DNA and fingerprint evidence that shows these items were not from these two seriously damages the case against them.
Finally, given that the raping and killing of the woman is directly comparable to another woman who was killed a month later, for which another man is in prison, gives another reason why the case should not have taken 31 years to reevaluate.
JMO, of course.
This does NOT prove that the are innocent. What was the actual evidence (circumstantial, witness, etc) that linked them to the crime and earned the conviction?
(If they ARE innocent, then of course this is good news... but the assumption that they were railroaded needs to be more thoroughly investigated. And I no longer trust any modern journalist to give the facts anymore.)
Loss of income? How about loss of liberty?
If they are innocent i agree. There is no way i would spend a year in prison in exchange for $24k. Certainly not for 30 years.
The reality is that no ammount would be enough. Although, about 3x 750k would go along way to begin the healing process.
Problem is that Robeson County is a dirt poor county. Probably the poorest county in North Carolina. Welfare is through the roof and there is a huge tax burden upon land owners.
Without a time machine, you can’t correct for that. And I don’t think any amount of money will compensate. So what I would aim for is financial security for them, so they can get on with life.
That’s not exactly accurate
Frequently the convicted in these cases will take that compromise versus risking it
Even if innocent
Prosecutors are loathe to admit wrongdoing by their office
Nearly all these sorts of cases are dealt with by a judge
Not by the states request
The legislature should step in and make this right.
We make extraordinary efforts to ensure convicting the innocent doesn’t happen.
But there is not perfection in the ways of man.
So make it right. I’m thinking more like $5M each.
Loss of Freedom is infinitely valuable, as we are wont to say on FR.
I’d use the money to buy some guns, then I’d go after the people that did this to me, spaghetti western style.
Good point. An annual stipend on top of the initial lump sum settlement is definitely appropriate in cases such as this.
I tend to agree. And these articles never mention the prosecutor.
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