US: Half-brothers receive record $75m payout for wrongful conviction three decades ago

Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, who are intellectually disabled half-brothers, spent decades on death row until they were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2014.

Coerced as teenagers into signing false confessions written by law enforcement officers, Mr McCollum spent 31 years on death row, becoming the longest serving death row inmate in North Carolina. Mr Brown, who was 16 when he was convicted, was the state’s youngest person on death row.

A jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina last week returned a verdict totalling $75 million against the State Bureau of Investigation agents who violated their civil rights, comprised of $31 million of compensatory damages for each brother and $13 million in punitive damages.

Prior to the verdict, Roberson County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Department and two of its officers agreed to pay the brothers $9 million for their part in the miscarriage of justice and to avoid having the case go to the jury against them.

Des Hogan, partner at Hogan Lovells, which represented the brothers on a pro bono basis, said: “Henry and Leon lost more than 31 years of their lives, and suffered enormously during this long incarceration for a crime they did not commit.

“You can’t put a price on this loss, but we are grateful that defendants have been forced to acknowledge this travesty of injustice and a strong message has been sent in North Carolina and around the country that coercive interrogations and covering up police misconduct will not be tolerated.”