"Antonin Scalia Pushed Death Penalty For Now-Exonerated Henry Lee McCollum"
Dear D,
Here is the Frontline episode I recommended while discussing Henry Lee McCollum's DNA exoneration 30 years after his rape-murder conviction..
"Frontline: Rape-Murder Case Involved A Daisy Chain Of 4 False Confessions"
It is impossible to say how America's revaluation of the legal system will "sort out" as Michael Brown's killing recedes into history.
My sense - perhaps enhanced by "wishful thinking" - is that many millions of Americans are newly aware that our legal system is saturated with racism, that police are often out of control and that something has to be done.
I hope these truths are as burned into memory as the photograph below.
Alan: Most Americans have living relatives who were alive when these good Christians cooked this man.
"Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right
"Non-Racist" Gringos Cheer Black Man Who Would "Ventilate Black Asses With M16s"
Paz contigo
Alan
Henry McCollum sits surrounded by guards in a Robeson County, N.C. courtroom on Tuesday
LUMBERTON, N.C.—A North Carolina judge overturned the convictions Tuesday of two men who have served 30 years in prison for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl after another man's DNA was recently discovered on evidence in the case.
Superior Court Judge Douglas Sasser ordered the immediate release of Henry McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46. The half brothers were convicted in the 1983 slaying of Sabrina Buie in Robeson County.
Lawyers for the men petitioned for their release after DNA evidence from a cigarette butt recovered at the crime scene pointed to another man. That man, who lived close to the soybean field where the dead girl's body was found, is already serving a life sentence for a similar rape and murder that happened less than a month later.
Family members for the men gasped and some sobbed as the judge announced his decision to the packed courtroom. Mr. Brown smiled and shook a defense lawyer's hand and Mr. McCollum looked spent and relieved
"We waited years and years," said James McCollum, Henry's father. "We kept the faith."
It wasn't immediately clear how soon the men will walk free. Procedure requires that they return to the prisons where they have been serving time before they can be processed out.
Leon Brown speaks with a reporter on Aug. 26 at the Maury Correctional Institution in Maury, N.C.Associated Press
Mr. McCollum has been housed for decades on North Carolina's death row at Central Prison in Raleigh. Mr. Brown is assigned to Maury Correctional Institution, a high security prison in Greene County.
Keith Acree, spokesman for the state prison system, said it would likely be Wednesday at the earliest before the required paperwork is in order and the men are released.
Judge Sasser ruled after a day-long evidence hearing during which Sharon Stellato, the associate director North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, testified about three interviews she had over the summer with the 74-year-old inmate now suspected of killing Buie.
According to Ms. Stellato, the inmate said at first he didn't know Buie. But in later interviews, the man said the girl would come to his house and buy cigarettes for him, Ms. Stellato said.
The man also told them he saw the girl the night she went missing and gave her a coat and hat because it was raining, Mr. Stellato said. He told the commission that is why his DNA may have been at the scene.
Ms. Stellato also said the man repeatedly told her Messrs. McCollum and Brown are innocent.
Still, he denied involvement in the killing, Ms. Stellato said. He told the commission that the girl was alive when she left his house and that he didn't see her again. He told the commission that he didn't leave the house because it was raining and he had to work the next day. Ms. Stellato said weather records show it didn't rain the night Buie went missing or the next day.
Robeson County District Attorney Johnson Britt acknowledged the DNA discovery in court papers. He said evidence from the original trial is being tested again.
Buie was found in a rural soybean field, naked except for a bra pushed up against her neck. A short distance away, police found two bloody sticks and a cigarette butt.
Authorities said Mr. McCollum, who was 19 at the time, and Mr. Brown, who was 15, confessed to killing Buie.
Attorneys said both men have low IQs and their confessions were coerced after hours of questioning. There is no physical evidence connecting them to the crime.
Both were initially given death sentences, which were overturned. At a second trial, Mr. McCollum was again sent to death row, where he remains, while Mr. Brown was convicted of rape and sentenced to life.
The DNA from the cigarette butts doesn't match either of them, and fingerprints taken from a beer can at the scene aren't theirs either. The other man now suspected in Buie's killing was convicted of assaulting three other women over 30 years before his last conviction.
Lawyers for the two men said the new testing leaves no doubt about their clients' innocence.
Ken Rose, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, has represented Mr. McCollum for 20 years.
"It's terrifying that our justice system allowed two intellectually disabled children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to suffer there for 30 years," Mr. Rose said.
—Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.
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