2 brothers that were wrongfully imprisoned get $75 million as compensation in damages that were caused by their prison sentence.
The half-brothers were wrongfully imprisoned for 31 years.
The pair were acquitted as part of a North Carolina federal civil rights case.
They were wrongfully charged for the rape and murder of a 11-year-ild girl in 1983.
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown are set to receive a compensation of $31 million each as a result of their wrongful charge and imprisonment.
This amounts to $1 million for each year that they spent in jail.
After the trial, Attorney Elliot Abrams said:
The first jury to hear all of the evidence – including the wrongly suppressed evidence – found Henry and Leon to be innocent.
The 2 men were freed in 2014 when DNA evidence showed that they were not involved in the horrible crime.
The results showed that the crime was linked to an already convicted killer.
The half-brothers were teenagers at the time of their conviction.
They spent a significant amount of their adulthood behind the bars.
Attorneys that were defending the brothers said that the 2 had low IQs.
They also noted that they were forced into confessing the crimes by the police during interrogation.
McCollum was 19 and Brown was 15 when they were sentenced to death.
On May 14, 2021, the judgment arrived against former SBI (State Bureau of Investigation) agents Leroy Allen and Kenneth Snead.
The 2 were part of the original investigation.
Allen is retired and Snead passed away in 2019.
McCollum spent most of his 31 years in prison on death row.
He was once the longest-serving death row inmate of North Carolina.
Brown suffers from mental health conditions that were related to his time in prison and requires full-time care.
They deserve every single penny of that money.
