On September 2nd, Henry Lee McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46, were ordered released from prison by a North Carolina judge after DNA evidence proved them innocent of a 1983 rape and murder for which they had been convicted. The mentally disabled teenage half-brothers were arrested for the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in rural North Carolina, and were coerced into falsely confessing to the crime. Despite no physical or forensic evidence linking them to the crime, the brothers were both initially convicted and sentenced to death for murder.
The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission recently conducted DNA testing of a cigarette butt found at the scene of the crime. The DNA results ruled out McCollum and Brown yet implicated Roscoe Artis—a man who lived close to where the victim’s body was discovered, who had a history of similar sexual assault convictions, and remains in prison for the rape and murder of another young girl in 1983.
After 30 years behind bars for a heinous crime they did not commit, McCollum and Brown were declared innocent and released by Douglas B. Sasser, a Superior Court judge.
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