Posted on 05/17/2021 2:42:19 PM PDT by deport
Two North Carolina men who were wrongfully convicted in a rape and murder of an 11-year-old were awarded $75 million total in compensatory damages Friday, according to the Associated Press.
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, who each spent 31 years in jail for a crime they did not commit, were each awarded $1 million for every year spent in prison. In addition to the $31 million each, the eight-person jury awarded them $13 million in punitive damages,
More than three decades after they were convicted of the rape and death of Sabrina Buie in 1983, new DNA evidence showed another man was responsible.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
The prosecutor, the late Joe Freeman Britt, is in The Guinness Book of World Records as “the worlds deadliest prosecutor”, having sent 47 men to death row. Apparently, he also had a history of prosecutorial misconduct, withheld the exonerating DNA evidence in this case, and used a witness that was subsequently convicted of another very similar murder in the same town. It sounds like the witness was probably also the actual killer. In the end, we will probably never know the truth.
A million dollars per year is not enough compensation for being in prison.
This case is a huge mess.
They each got 750K when they were released and it was gone in a few months. Scammed by lawyers and relatives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/us/mccollum-brown-exoneration.html
like I said no good answer for this problem.
Certainly is...
$1 million per year is pretty much the going rate.
I have reservations about the death penalty be ause you just can’t trust anything cops, prosecutors and judges say; and they are all too willing to hide evidence of innocense.
Well, I think the question to ask is what were their prior criminal records? Prosecutors seem to often go hard after a shaky case because of criminal history, vowing to "put this guy away once and for all" even if the evidence for the case in question is marginal. A lot of the falsely convicted richly deserve long sentences, they just got them for a crime they didn't happen to commit - a subtlety that gets completely lost in these discussions.
Of course, if these two are genuine victims of prosecutorial malice they deserve whatever compensation their attorneys can get for them.
And you're right - prosecutors don't give a D@MN about your guilt or innocence. It's all about their record of convictions, designed to get them to the next step on the political ladder.
Dt. 19:15 One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established. 16 If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong; 17 Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; 18 And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; 19 Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. 21 And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." (cf. Dt. 27:25)
“... they deserve whatever compensation their attorneys can get for them.”
No worldly compensation is worth the loss of 31 years of your short life, nor the abuse heaped on you in prison
The state never pays. Its taxpayers that pay. It should be the prosecutors that pay.
I think Juries are often stupid, and I think prosecutors are sometimes unethical.
Granted award by whom ?
A jury?
I doubt a million a year probably tuned down if appealed...
Here is one for scold republic
I’ve got friends and associates who did 25-34 years in United States penitentiaries for marijuana smuggling
Their only crime
No guns
For something now legal in around half the nation and will be everywhere within 5-10 years
Why aren’t folks imprisoned like that by those draconian federal sentencing guidelines of 1987 which did this and made offenses that before that were 24-48 months in a federal prison camp in the stroke of a pen as severe as murder or treason or espionage or kidnapping....almost life sentences and in max level joints like Lewisburg and Terre Haute
Begs a ponder though I ...lol....don’t expect much sympathy here...
Nice Jewish boys from Philly....the Black Tuna gang as the Miami prosecutor called them....were absolutely railroaded after two freighter loads one of which they were busted for....
Old crackers in Everglades city...
And so on
Henry McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46 were mentally challenged teenagers when they confessed to killing Buie. The two were never physically connected to the Buie crime scene, but signed written confessions days after the discovery of the child’s body. After a series of re-trials through the ‘90s and early 2000s, newly discovered evidence tucked away in the Red Springs Police Department, and DNA sampling led to Tuesday’s exoneration of McCollum and Brown.
Both men reunited with their families Wednesday morning, and offered prayers to the Buie family, who said they still believe the men are connected to Sabrina’s murder.
“I just want her to rest in peace and she can’t do that as long as killers are running around loose,” her sister said.
The DNA found on a cigarette was just one piece of scene evidence that has tied another North Carolina inmate to the crime.
Roscoe Artis, 76, lived just around the corner from the Buies in 1983, and confessed to raping and killing another Red Springs young woman, Joanne Brockman. That crime happened just weeks after Buie’s murder.
The lead investigator with the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission testified this week that Artis had offered specifics about Buie’s case during the course of several interviews. The investigator also said Artis repeatedly said McCollum and Brown were the wrong men behind bars.
“I never knew the man existed,” said Buie of the revelation. “We never knew him and we never even went on that street.”
Sabrina Buie’s half-naked body would be discovered in the soybean field near a convenience store, and directly across from Artis’s Richardson Street home. She’d been raped and strangled to death with her panties.
Buie’s said this week’s developments have set her family back and they try to wrap their heads around newly-discovered evidence.
“How does incriminating evidence like this get separated [from the case file]?” she asked. “I mean you found some here, you found some there...It doesn’t make any sense.
The DNA evidence, gathered in 2004 by the Commission at Brown’s request, was never brought up in subsequent re-trials.
“I’m trying to figure out where all this stuff all of sudden came from,” she said. “It’s like someone just made the magic wand and it just came out of nowhere.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/henry-mccollum-leon-brown-75-million-wrongful-conviction-settlement/
What’s really cruel, is that DNA evidence has been in use for almost 40 years. Perhaps their state was one which wouldn’t allow it back then.
In Re: “And you’re right - prosecutors don’t give a D@MN about your guilt or innocence. It’s all about their record of convictions, designed to get them to the next step on the political ladder”
As much as I think that is a problem, I do think that there are other good prosecutors that do not behave that way. I just think there are TOO MANY many who do behave as you say. THAT - the TOO MANY - is the problem.
There is likely too many because those above the prosecutors are the ones pushing for convictions, and so the prosecutors have less incentive, from above, for seeking justice as opposed to convictions. The prosecutors get little reward and little thanks for not pursuing a wrongful conviction.
I thought it was their sworn duty to find the innocent as well as the guilty.. Sure doesn't work out that way anymore.. Politics, it's all about politics..
Convictions get overturned because people who want them overturned convince others to go along. It is the people who have political agendas.
Convictions are made because people who want them made convince others to go along. It is the people who have political agendas.
...it's just another government program gone wrong.
That's the only reasonable position for conservatives to hold.
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