Two half-brothers, African-Americans with intellectual disabilities, will receive $ 84 million to compensate for their continued detention for 31 years for a crime of which they were innocent, said Monday their lawyer.
A jury awarded $ 75 million in damages on Friday evening to Henry Lee McCollum and his half-brother Leon Brown, who had filed a civil complaint with federal justice for violations of their civil rights.
A parallel deal added an additional $ 9 million.
"This is the most severe verdict ever rendered for a miscarriage of justice in the history of the United States," said Me Des Hogan, who represented them.
For him, “the jury wanted to send a message to say that the old days are over”, when the authorities paid little attention to the rights of marginalized, poor, colored people living in rural areas.
An anonymous denunciation
The half-brothers were 19 and 15 when they were arrested in 1983 for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in the small town of Red Springs, North Carolina.
The girl's body was found almost naked in a field amid cans of beer and cigarette butts.
Arrested on the basis of an anonymous denunciation, a teenage girl who then retracted, the elder first claimed to know nothing about the crime.
After five hours of questioning without a lawyer, he had finally signed a confession, drawn up by investigators, which incriminated his brother.
The latter, although illiterate, had also signed a confession in similar circumstances.
Sentenced to death
Based on their confession alone, they were sentenced to death, later commuted for Mr. Brown to life.
In prison, the two men have always claimed their innocence and it was finally recognized in 2004 after DNA analyzes carried out on one of the cigarette butts found near the victim.
This DNA was from a man who lived 100 meters from the crime scene.
Less than a month after Sabrina Bruie's death, he raped and killed an 18-year-old girl, whose body was also found naked in a field in the small town.
Sentenced for this crime, he was never questioned about the girl's death.
Because of this mistake, the two half-brothers "went through hell and will never fully readjust," their lawyer said.
But “they're glad the jury recognized the sheriff's mistakes.
We finally gave them reason, ”he added.
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