Three Years Later, Report Explores Lessons From Two North Carolina Death-Penalty Exonerations

On the third anniver­sary of their ground­break­ing exon­er­a­tion, a new report by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) reviews in-depth the long path from wrong­ful con­vic­tions and death sen­tences to free­dom trav­eled by for­mer North Carolina death-row pris­on­ers Henry McCollum and Leon Brown.

By the time DNA evi­dence exon­er­at­ed the broth­ers of the 1983 rape and mur­der of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie, McCollum had spent 30 years on death row and Brown was serv­ing a life sen­tence for Buie’s rape, after his mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence had been over­turned. Justice Antonin Scalia had sin­gled out the case as epit­o­miz­ing why there should be a death penalty. 

According to the report, if not for a sin­gle cig­a­rette butt, ​“Henry and Leon would like­ly have remained in prison for the rest of their lives. Henry might have been executed.” 

Although no phys­i­cal evi­dence con­nect­ed the broth­ers to the mur­der, the 19-year-old McCollum had signed a writ­ten con­fes­sion that assert­ed he and three oth­ers had raped Buie and mur­dered her by stuff­ing her panties down her throat. His younger broth­er, Leon Brown, then 15 years old, also con­fessed to the crime. However, the CDPL report, Saved From Execution: The Unlikely Exoneration of Henry McCollum, notes that the two intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled teenagers had been ​“naive, pow­er­less, and intim­i­dat­ed by a cadre of law enforce­ment offi­cers … into sign­ing false con­fes­sions. Every gory detail in those con­fes­sions,” the report recounts, ​“was pro­vid­ed by inves­ti­ga­tors …, but law enforce­ment nev­er fol­lowed up on clues that might have led to the real killer. An overzeal­ous pros­e­cu­tor with a flair for court­room the­atrics hyped the man­u­fac­tured evi­dence. And the state ille­gal­ly with­held facts that might have allowed Henry and Leon’s attor­neys to prove their innocence.” 

The CDPL rep­re­sent­ed McCollum for two decades. Gretchen Engel, the Center’s Executive Director, said the case ​“shows us the pow­er that law enforce­ment and pros­e­cu­tors have in our sys­tem, and how that pow­er can be abused. It shows us how hard it is to uncov­er a wrong­ful con­vic­tion. It shows us that even cas­es we think are air­tight can get the facts entirely wrong.” 

In 2005, test­ing on the cig­a­rette butt had pro­duced DNA that did not match either McCollum or Brown, but their con­vic­tions remained unaf­fect­ed. Then, in 2009, Brown — hav­ing exhaust­ed his appeals in his non-cap­i­tal case — sought review from the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, one of the few such com­mis­sions in exis­tence in the coun­try. In 2014, the Inquiry Commission ordered more advanced DNA test­ing of the cig­a­rette butt, and the results matched anoth­er man who had lived around the cor­ner from the Buies in 1983 and who raped and killed anoth­er young woman lat­er that year. 

In 2015, Gov. Pat McCrory grant­ed McCollum and Brown par­dons based on inno­cence. Since being freed from 30 years of incar­cer­a­tion (includ­ing 10 years in soli­tary con­fine­ment and numer­ous sex­u­al assaults at the hands of oth­er pris­on­ers), Brown has been diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar dis­or­der and repeat­ed­ly hos­pi­tal­ized for men­tal health prob­lems, includ­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions and depression.

As the anniver­sary of McCollum and Brown’s exon­er­a­tion approached, a North Carolina state rep­re­sen­ta­tive post­ed a pho­to­graph of the state’s elec­tric chair on his Facebook page, with the tagline “#MakeTheChairGreatAgain.” Representative Justin Burr said ​“Justice was served to near­ly 200 con­vict­ed mur­ders in this chair. The chair has been in the pos­ses­sion of our state his­to­ry muse­um since 2000. I think it’s time to put it back to work.”