Federal Court Rules to Protect the Interest of Incompetent North Carolina Death-Row Exoneree

A fed­er­al judge has void­ed a con­tract that had pro­vid­ed Orlando-based attor­ney Patrick Megaro hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars of com­pen­sa­tion at the expense of Henry McCollum (pic­tured left, with his broth­er Leon Brown), an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled for­mer death-row pris­on­er who was exon­er­at­ed in 2014 after DNA test­ing by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission showed that he had not com­mit­ted the bru­tal rape and mur­der of a young girl for which he had been wrong­ly con­vict­ed and con­demned. McCollum and Brown — who both have IQs mea­sured in the 50s and 60s — had been con­vict­ed in 1983 based on coerced false con­fes­sions that the broth­ers (aged 19 and 15 at the time) pro­vid­ed to interrogating officers. 

At the time of his exon­er­a­tion, McCollum had spent 30 years on death row and was the state’s longest serv­ing death-row prisoner. 

Megaro became McCollum’s and Brown’s lawyer in March 2015, after two women who claimed to be advo­cat­ing on behalf of the broth­ers per­suad­ed them to fire the lawyers who had been rep­re­sent­ing them in their efforts to obtain com­pen­sa­tion and to hire Megaro’s firm. McCollum was award­ed $750,000 in com­pen­sa­tion from North Carolina in October 2015, at least half of which appears to have been paid to Megaro. Within sev­en months, McCollum was out of mon­ey and tak­ing out high-inter­est loans that had been arranged and approved by Megaro. Megaro also nego­ti­at­ed a pro­posed set­tle­ment of the broth­ers’ wrong­ful pros­e­cu­tion law­suit in which he was to receive $400,000 of a $1 mil­lion pay­ment to the brothers. 

Defense lawyer Ken Rose, who rep­re­sent­ed McCollum for 20 years and helped win McCollum’s release from prison, pro­vid­ed tes­ti­mo­ny that two men­tal experts had pre­vi­ous­ly found that McCollum was ​“not com­pe­tent to pro­vide a con­fes­sion” and that McCollum remained ​“vul­ner­a­ble to manip­u­la­tion and con­trol by oth­ers.” After hear­ing addi­tion­al evi­dence from experts and oth­er wit­ness­es, U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle deter­mined that, as a result of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, McCollum lacked knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of finan­cial issues, ​“remains eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed,” and was ​“unable to make impor­tant deci­sions about his per­son and prop­er­ty.” As a result, the court void­ed the con­tract between McCollum and Megano, includ­ing the fee arrangements. 

Raymond Tarlton, whom Judge Boyle appoint­ed to serve as McCollum’s guardian ad litem, said the deci­sion ​“made clear that the same dis­abil­i­ties that led to Henry McCollum giv­ing a false con­fes­sion in 1983 made him vul­ner­a­ble to be manip­u­lat­ed and con­trolled after release.” 

The court also has appoint­ed a guardian to pro­tect the inter­ests of Leon Brown. Judge Boyle ordered fur­ther brief­ing pend­ing receipt of the guardian’s report to assist in deter­min­ing the sta­tus of the con­tract between Megaro and Brown.