After 31 years, 2 NC men freed from prison on DNA evidence

Two North Carolina inmates have been freed from jail after spending more than 30 years in prison for a crime they did not commit.

The New York Times reports they were freed after DNA tests showed  evidence collected from the scene of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl did not belong to either of the men.

Police arrested the men, Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown, in Red Springs, a town of about 4,000 people. They were 19 and 15 respectively when they were accused of the rape and murder of Sabrina Buie, whose body was found in a soybean field. Brown and McCollum were fingered for the murders by a local teenager. The brothers had recently moved to the town from New Jersey, and lacked strong ties to the community that may have helped to keep them out of trouble.

The Times notes that in a Supreme Court decision not to hear an appeal to rescind the death penalty, one of the judges noted that McCollum had the mental age and capabilities of the average 9-year-old.

McCollum confessed to the crime after a five hour interrogation by the police without a lawyer present. They also did not allow McCollum to see his mother, despite the fact she was at the station, according to the Times.

As a part of this false confession, McCollum claimed he and two other men had killed the young girl. The Times reports that despite this claim, neither of the two other men named in the confession was prosecuted for their role in the crime.

The brothers were freed when DNA testing of a cigarette butt at the scene that was collected as evidence at the time did not have either McCollum's or Brown's DNA on it. The cigarette did have the DNA of a man named Roscoe Artis, who had a long history of sexual crimes and lived only a block from where Buie's body was found, according to the Times.

Some weeks after the brothers' arrest, Artis was arrested and convicted of the rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl. Artis was given a death sentence that was reduced to life in prison.

McCollum was still on death row for a crime he did not commit at the time of his exoneration.