North Carolina Jury Awards Death-Row Exonerees Henry McCollum and Leon Brown $75M for Their Wrongful Capital Convictions

In a case the late Justice Antonin Scalia tout­ed as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, a North Carolina fed­er­al jury has award­ed two intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row exonerees $75 mil­lion for the police mis­con­duct that sent them to death row. On May 14, 2021, half-broth­ers Henry McCollum (pic­tured, left) and Leon Brown (pic­tured, right) were each award­ed $31 mil­lion, $1 mil­lion for each year they spent in prison, plus an addi­tion­al $13 mil­lion in punitive damages.

McCollum and Brown were 19 and 15, respec­tive­ly, when they were arrest­ed in 1983 on charges of rap­ing and mur­der­ing 11-year-old Sabrina Buie. They were coerced into con­fess­ing, and police fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence against them while sup­press­ing or ignor­ing evi­dence of their inno­cence. In 2014, they were exon­er­at­ed after DNA evi­dence impli­cat­ed Roscoe Artis, who has been con­vict­ed of a sim­i­lar crime. McCollum and Brown’s youth and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties made them par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to manip­u­la­tion and coer­cion by police.

After their exon­er­a­tions, the broth­ers sought dam­ages against the offi­cers and gov­ern­ment enti­ties they said had vio­lat­ed their due process rights. They filed suit against offi­cers from the Red Springs, North Carolina Police Department, the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office, and the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI). The Red Springs Police Department set­tled for $1 mil­lion in 2017. Robeson County agreed to a $9 mil­lion set­tle­ment on May 14, just before clos­ing argu­ments began in the suit. 

“The first jury to hear all of the evi­dence — includ­ing the wrong­ly sup­pressed evi­dence — found Henry and Leon to be inno­cent, found them to have been demon­stra­bly and excru­ci­at­ing­ly wronged, and has done what the law can do to make it right at this late date,” said Elliot Abrams, an attor­ney for the broth­ers. The $75 mil­lion award was the largest in the U.S. in a wrong­ful con­vic­tion case and the largest per­son­al injury case award in North Carolina his­to­ry, Abrams told the Washington Post. ​“The jury could not have sent a stronger mes­sage that the cit­i­zens of this coun­try will not tol­er­ate law enforce­ment mis­con­duct and will no longer blind­ly believe the tes­ti­mo­ny of law enforce­ment over that of mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple,” he said.

In clos­ing argu­ments, McCollum’s and Brown’s legal team described the suf­fer­ing that the men endured dur­ing their impris­on­ment. Sentenced to death at 16, Brown became the youngest per­son on North Carolina’s death row. Though his sen­tence was lat­er reduced to life in prison, the 31 years he was wrong­ful­ly incar­cer­at­ed left him with such sig­nif­i­cant men­tal health prob­lems that he now requires full-time care. McCollum spent 31 years on death row, becom­ing North Carolina’s longest-serv­ing death row pris­on­er. He watched as 42 oth­er pris­on­ers were tak­en to their exe­cu­tions, and attempt­ed sui­cide after one exe­cu­tion in 1986.

Scott MacLatchie, defense attor­ney for for­mer SBI agents Leroy Allen and Kenneth Snead, spent his clos­ing argu­ment attempt­ing to cast doubt on the inno­cence of McCollum and Brown. U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle twice sus­tained objec­tions to MacLatchie’s base­less claims, remind­ing the jury, ​“His argu­ment that the broth­ers are rapists and mur­der­ers is inappropriate.”

After the jury announced the award, McCollum said, ​“I’ve got my free­dom. There’s still a lot of inno­cent peo­ple in prison today. And they don’t deserve to be there.” Abrams echoed his sen­ti­ment, say­ing, ​“The broth­ers have been con­sis­tent in their posi­tion that they are only two of many inno­cent peo­ple who have been impris­oned, many of whom remain on the death rows through­out our nation. Their hor­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence shows the need for the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in this country.”