Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #374 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Henry McCollum and Leon Brown

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#374 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Henry McCollum and Leon Brown · Wrongful Conviction

0:04
Speaker 1: Hi there, it's Laurini writer, and this time I'm here
0:07
Speaker 1: with some really encouraging news for anyone committed to true
0:10
Speaker 1: justice in this country. This is a case that was
0:12
Speaker 1: used by US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to justify
0:16
Speaker 1: why the death penalty exists. But as we'll hear in
0:19
Speaker 1: this episode, the murder he was using as proof that
0:22
Speaker 1: the death penalty should remain in place was in fact
0:24
Speaker 1: an egregious, wrongful conviction, exactly the reason why we should
0:28
Speaker 1: question death sentences in every case. Eventually, justice was served
0:33
Speaker 1: for Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. After thirty one years
0:37
Speaker 1: on death row. They were exonerated on the basis of
0:40
Speaker 1: actual innocence, and we're thrilled to tell you that since
0:43
Speaker 1: our episode first aired, they've also received compensation for what
0:47
Speaker 1: they went through. In May twenty twenty one, the brothers
0:50
Speaker 1: were awarded seventy five million dollars, the largest wrongful conviction
0:55
Speaker 1: verdict in US history. Over the years, their cases were
0:59
Speaker 1: reviewed by dozens of judges, lawyers, and jurors who couldn't
1:04
Speaker 1: see the truth of their innocence. With this settlement, finally,
1:08
Speaker 1: Henry and Leon were believed welcome to wrongful conviction, false confessions.
1:19
Speaker 1: I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drewson. In
1:23
Speaker 1: today's episode, the crime is bad about as bad as
1:26
Speaker 1: it gets. But the way police and prosecutors mishandled this
1:29
Speaker 1: case and condemned two innocent men to death, that's a
1:33
Speaker 1: crime unto itself. Henry McCollum and his younger brother, Leon
1:37
Speaker 1: Brown survived a decades long fight for the truth from
1:41
Speaker 1: behind bars. Henry and Leon are living proof that false
1:45
Speaker 1: confessions can send innocent people to death row.
1:59
Speaker 2: Twenty years ago, the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which Laura
2:02
Speaker 2: and I codirect, was deeply involved in exonerating men off
2:07
Speaker 2: of death row in Illinois. The numbers kept ticking up.
2:12
Speaker 2: It went up to twenty people who had been wrongfully
2:15
Speaker 2: sentenced to death.
2:17
Speaker 1: Twenty innocent people. Eventually, Illinois lost confidence that the people
2:21
Speaker 1: on death row were actually guilty, and so we got
2:23
Speaker 1: rid of the death penalty.
2:25
Speaker 2: When the death penalty was abolished in Illinois ten years ago,
2:29
Speaker 2: there were some prosecutors who claimed that the sky would fall,
2:34
Speaker 2: that crime rates would rise, that the system would miss
2:39
Speaker 2: the ability and the power to use the death penalty
2:45
Speaker 2: to right wrongs, and that hasn't happened. We've moved on,
2:51
Speaker 2: we've evolved, and it's time for the rest of the
2:54
Speaker 2: country to follow suit.
2:56
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. The death penalty is supposed to be
2:58
Speaker 1: reserved for the worst of the worst, but way too
3:00
Speaker 1: often those are the cases where wrongful convictions happen.
3:03
Speaker 2: These are the crimes where there is so much pressure
3:06
Speaker 2: on law enforcement to come up with quick answers that
3:11
Speaker 2: there are rushes to judgment. Right.
3:13
Speaker 1: That's the problem with the death penalty. People can get
3:16
Speaker 1: so blinded with the horrificness of a crime that moral
3:19
Speaker 1: outrage can distort the search for the truth. And that's
3:23
Speaker 1: what happened in this case. Henry McCollum and his brother
3:26
Speaker 1: Leon Brown paid a terrible price for the police's rush
3:30
Speaker 1: to judgment.
3:31
Speaker 2: The facts of the crime often don't tell the whole story,
3:36
Speaker 2: and sometimes tell a false story. So while on paper
3:41
Speaker 2: this case looks like one that is deserving of the
3:47
Speaker 2: ultimate punishment, in practice it sent two innocent men to
3:53
Speaker 2: prison for more than thirty years.
3:59
Speaker 3: To day.
4:00
Speaker 1: Story starts in Robison County, North Carolina. It's a rural
4:03
Speaker 1: area on the state's southern border, eighty miles inland from
4:06
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Coast. Since the eighteenth century, Robison County has
4:09
Speaker 1: been known for social strata and racial strife. It's a
4:13
Speaker 1: place where a small group of elite white men descended
4:16
Speaker 1: from colonial landowners, dominate everything from the lumber business to
4:20
Speaker 1: the illegal drug trade to the courtrooms. Meanwhile Native Americans,
4:24
Speaker 1: poor whites, and black people get the scraps. On September
4:29
Speaker 1: twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three, Ronnie Lee Buie came home
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Speaker 1: to his tiny house in one of Robison County's predominantly
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Speaker 1: black communities. It was a little after twelve am. He'd
4:39
Speaker 1: just finished working the midnight shift. Within minutes, he noticed
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Speaker 1: that his eleven year old daughter, Sabrina, was missing from
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Speaker 1: her room. Sabrina's family calls the police. As the sunrises
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Speaker 1: and words spreads, Friends and neighbors fan out to search
4:54
Speaker 1: for her, but there's no sign of Sabrina until the
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Speaker 1: next afternoon, September twenty sixth. That's when Sabrina Buoy is found,
5:02
Speaker 1: and it's one of the worst discoveries imaginable. Sabrina is
5:05
Speaker 1: lying in a soybean field, dead, surrounded by empty beer
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Speaker 1: cans and cigarette butts. She's been beaten and raped. She
5:14
Speaker 1: isn't wearing anything except for a bra that's been pushed
5:16
Speaker 1: up around her neck. And her cause of death Sabrina
5:20
Speaker 1: had been suffocated by her own underwear. Someone had pushed
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Speaker 1: them into her throat with a stick.
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Speaker 2: Now, when I read about this crime, it just gutted me.
5:29
Speaker 2: My reaction was visceral. There's a level of depravity here
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Speaker 2: that shocks the conscience.
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Speaker 1: Police couldn't bring themselves to believe that someone from their
5:38
Speaker 1: own community would have done this, so they started investigating outsiders.
5:43
Speaker 1: Pretty soon, police caught wind of a rumor about a
5:45
Speaker 1: nineteen year old who just arrived in Robison County to
5:48
Speaker 1: visit his mom. The local high schoolers thought this new
5:52
Speaker 1: kid might have killed Zabrina because, according to them, he
5:55
Speaker 1: looked weird. That new kid's name was Henry McCollum. Even
6:00
Speaker 1: though his mom lived in Robinson County, Henry had grown
6:03
Speaker 1: up in New Jersey with his grandma. Henry had been
6:06
Speaker 1: diagnosed with intellectual disability when he was really young. For years,
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Speaker 1: he attended a special school, but he failed a bunch
6:13
Speaker 1: of grades anyway and eventually dropped out. School wasn't Henry's
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Speaker 1: strong suit, but obedience to authority was he'd never been
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Speaker 1: associated with any kind of crime. With nothing more to
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Speaker 1: go on than a high school rumor, police go to
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Speaker 1: Henry's mom's house, and on the evening of September twenty eighth,
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Speaker 1: they bring Henry in for interrogation. Three police officers questioned
6:37
Speaker 1: him for more than four hours, all off camera. So
6:41
Speaker 1: we don't know everything that happened in that room. What
6:44
Speaker 1: we do know is that some of Henry's interrogators were
6:47
Speaker 1: familiar with the crime scene. They knew all the information
6:50
Speaker 1: that a killer would be expected to describe. Sometime around
6:55
Speaker 1: two am, the interrogators emerged from the room with a
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Speaker 1: confession that named Henry as one of Sabrina's assailants. It
7:02
Speaker 1: had been written out by the cops. Henry had signed
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Speaker 1: it at the end in oversized letters that looked like
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Speaker 1: a child's handwriting. According to Henry, as soon as he
7:11
Speaker 1: wrote his name on the last page, he looked up
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Speaker 1: at his interrogators and said, can I go home now?
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Speaker 3: I think Henry is a very kind person. He's a
7:21
Speaker 3: very thoughtful person.
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Speaker 1: That's Representative Vernetta Alston. She's a member of the North
7:25
Speaker 1: Carolina State Legislature, but before that, she was a death
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Speaker 1: penalty lawyer who worked on Henry's case.
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Speaker 3: From the first time I met Henry in twenty twelve.
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Speaker 3: It's my impression that his deficits were very obvious. I
7:38
Speaker 3: think anyone talking to him now, or five years ago
7:41
Speaker 3: or thirty years ago would have noticed, and so as
7:45
Speaker 3: a result of his deficits, he signed the statement. Now,
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Speaker 3: I think most folks in that circumstance would understand that
7:51
Speaker 3: if they signed a confession to murder, that they wouldn't
7:54
Speaker 3: be allowed to walk out the front door of a
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Speaker 3: police station. But the statement used language that Henry was
8:00
Speaker 3: very unlikely to have understood, and so he didn't know
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Speaker 3: what was happening at all.
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Speaker 1: While Henry's confession was light on details, its story tracked
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Speaker 1: exactly what an investigator who'd been at the scene would know,
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Speaker 1: everything from the pattern on Sabrina's shirt to the brand
8:14
Speaker 1: of cigarettes left behind.
8:16
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. Henry could not lead the police to
8:20
Speaker 2: any evidence that they didn't already know about. His confession
8:26
Speaker 2: only contained details that the police already knew. That's a
8:31
Speaker 2: red flag. You have to wonder, is this the suspect's
8:36
Speaker 2: confession or a confession that was scripted by law enforcement
8:40
Speaker 2: to ensure that this suspect was going to get convicted.
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Speaker 1: Henry's confession didn't just implicate him. The story was that
8:48
Speaker 1: he'd attacked Sabrina along with four other teenagers. Now, three
8:52
Speaker 1: of those teens turned out to have strong alibis. One
8:55
Speaker 1: of them had even been out of state at the
8:57
Speaker 1: time of Sabrina's death. Prosecutors filed charges against those three,
9:02
Speaker 1: but the fourth person named it was Leon Brown, Henry
9:06
Speaker 1: McCollum's fifteen year old brother. And while Henry was disabled,
9:10
Speaker 1: Leon's limitations were far more profound. His IQ was in
9:14
Speaker 1: the forties, on the borderline between moderately and severely disabled,
9:19
Speaker 1: and he was completely illiterate.
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Speaker 3: Both of these men, who were at that time boys,
9:24
Speaker 3: their intellectual disabilities were exploited. Folks who have cognitive deficits
9:29
Speaker 3: that make it difficult or complicated for them to make
9:32
Speaker 3: everyday decisions to get dressed, to loan as schedule, to
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Speaker 3: make food for themselves, to drive cars, to learn in
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Speaker 3: school at a level that's consistent with their age. Folks
9:44
Speaker 3: who are unable to do those things, we shouldn't be
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Speaker 3: holding them to the same standard in our criminal justice system,
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Speaker 3: and certainly not in our death penalty system.
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Speaker 1: When Henry implicated Leon in his confession, it turned out
9:56
Speaker 1: the timing was pretty bad. While Henry was being questioned,
10:00
Speaker 1: the boy's mom arrived at the police station begging to
10:02
Speaker 1: see Henry. Police told her she'd have to wait until
10:05
Speaker 1: he confessed. But here's the thing. Henry's mom brought Leon
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Speaker 1: with her to the station. He was almost surely too
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Speaker 1: disabled to be left home alone. So after Henry confessed
10:15
Speaker 1: and the police came looking for Leon, they didn't have
10:18
Speaker 1: to go any farther than their own lobby. Police put
10:23
Speaker 1: Leon into an interrogation room, then marched his big brother
10:26
Speaker 1: in to show him what to do. Within minutes, Leon
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Speaker 1: was signing a written out confession of his own, scratching
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Speaker 1: his name as best he could on the bottom of
10:35
Speaker 1: a statement he couldn't even read. Based on their confessions,
10:39
Speaker 1: the two brothers were arrested and charged with rape and
10:42
Speaker 1: capital murder.
10:50
Speaker 4: This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
10:55
Speaker 4: and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international
10:59
Speaker 4: law firm. The u AIG pro Bono program provides free
11:02
Speaker 4: legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and
11:06
Speaker 4: individuals most in need. And recently they announced that working
11:10
Speaker 4: to reform the criminal justice system will become a key
11:13
Speaker 4: pillar of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had
11:16
Speaker 4: an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance
11:21
Speaker 4: to the most vulnerable members of our society and in
11:23
Speaker 4: support of the public interest, including extensive work in the
11:27
Speaker 4: criminal justice area.
11:35
Speaker 1: The question of who killed Sabrina Buie gripped Robinson County.
11:39
Speaker 1: The crime was terrible and the community wanted justice, so
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Speaker 1: the county's top prosecutor took over the case. The district
11:46
Speaker 1: attorney himself, Joe Freeman Britt, was six foot six, a
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Speaker 1: season trial lawyer known for dramatic courtroom flourishes like pounding
11:56
Speaker 1: bibles in front of the jury. But he was more
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Speaker 1: than just a flashy atturn me. By the time Henry
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Speaker 1: and Leon's cases crossed his desk, Joe Freeman Britt had
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Speaker 1: become infamous nationwide for his success at obtaining the death penalty.
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Speaker 1: Over his career, Britt sent more than forty seven people
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Speaker 1: to death row. At one point, he obtained two dozen
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Speaker 1: death sentences in only twenty eight months. Britt was so
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Speaker 1: prolific that he even ended up in the Guinness Book
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Speaker 1: of World Records, which called him the deadliest prosecutor.
12:29
Speaker 2: Some prosecutors believe deeply in the eye for an eye mentality.
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Speaker 2: For some, it's almost a biblical calling, like religious fervor
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Speaker 2: that animates them.
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Speaker 1: Forty seven people, I mean, if he weren't a prosecutor,
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Speaker 1: he'd be one of the most prolific serial killers in
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Speaker 1: the United States.
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Speaker 2: Forty seven people, that's unthinkable.
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Speaker 1: It seems like Britt leaned into his hard ass reputation.
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Speaker 1: He'd run training conferences for other prosecutors where he taught
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Speaker 1: them to quote ripped that jugular out. When he felt
13:02
Speaker 1: like waxing poetic, Britt would say, within each of us
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Speaker 1: burns a flame that constantly whispers, preserve life at any cost.
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Speaker 1: It's the prosecutor's job, he would add to extinguish that flame.
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Speaker 3: I think that that sums up who he was as
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Speaker 3: a person and as a district attorney. Joe Freeman. Britt
13:20
Speaker 3: was frankly a terror. He was a large, commanding presence,
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Speaker 3: and I think really leaned into that persona. I know
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Speaker 3: that he was very from what I've read, he was
13:33
Speaker 3: very much into the theater of a courtroom and really
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Speaker 3: played into that to secure convictions.
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Speaker 1: Joe Freeman Britt was in full form, gearing up to
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Speaker 1: try Henry and Leon for Sabrina's murder and seeking the
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Speaker 1: death penalty for them both. But before trial, two major
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Speaker 1: problems emerged with Britt's case against the brothers. First of all,
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Speaker 1: Henry and Leon's confessions didn't match each other on several
13:57
Speaker 1: important details, who was involved, how they met up with Sabrina,
14:01
Speaker 1: and the details of the rape and murder. And of
14:04
Speaker 1: course there was the matter of the three other boys
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Speaker 1: named in Henry's confession, all of whom were definitely innocent.
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Speaker 2: Leon or Henry. There was nothing other than their words
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Speaker 2: that linked them to this crime, you know. And Henry
14:19
Speaker 2: and Leon were not the kinds of people that would
14:22
Speaker 2: have committed a perfect crime.
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Speaker 1: Even the way in which the confessions were written didn't
14:27
Speaker 1: ring true.
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Speaker 3: In a statement used language that Henry was very unlikely
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Speaker 3: to have understood, and I think that's a product of
14:34
Speaker 3: his age and most certainly a product of his intellectual disabilities.
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Speaker 3: And Leon's is similar. If you look at Leon's statement
14:41
Speaker 3: is written in penmanship that Leon was incapable of because
14:44
Speaker 3: of his deficits, and again used language and detail and
14:48
Speaker 3: just cent in structure that Leon would have been incapable
14:50
Speaker 3: of creating.
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Speaker 1: The second problem. There was a pretty obvious alternative suspect,
14:55
Speaker 1: a man named Roscoe Artists. Artists lived near the field
14:58
Speaker 1: where Sabrina's body was found, and he had a disturbing history.
15:03
Speaker 1: Only a few weeks after Henry and Leon were arrested,
15:06
Speaker 1: Roscoe Artists had murdered an eighteen year old girl in
15:09
Speaker 1: an attack eerily similar to the attack on Sabrina. Both
15:12
Speaker 1: victims were raped and asphyxiated. Both of them were also
15:16
Speaker 1: found in fields wearing nothing but bras pushed up around
15:19
Speaker 1: their necks. It gets worse. Roscoe Artists was also a
15:23
Speaker 1: suspect in another rape murder case from nineteen eighty. In
15:26
Speaker 1: that case, the victim was found with an object shoved
15:29
Speaker 1: in her throat, another similarity that should have been impossible
15:33
Speaker 1: to miss.
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Speaker 2: Henry McCollum and Leon Brown did not have the kind
15:39
Speaker 2: of background that suggested they were capable of the horrific
15:45
Speaker 2: nature of this crime. This was the work of a
15:49
Speaker 2: sexual predator, probably a single sexual predator. Because of the
15:54
Speaker 2: way the crime scene presented itself. This is not some
15:59
Speaker 2: huge community that is beset by violent crime, and the
16:05
Speaker 2: first thing that police officers should have done is focus
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Speaker 2: on men in their own community who had a proclivity
16:13
Speaker 2: for committing these kinds of crimes. Rosco Artists showed a
16:17
Speaker 2: history of doing this over and over again, and his
16:21
Speaker 2: home was very close to where the body was found.
16:25
Speaker 1: Now here's the really crazy thing about Roscoe Artists. One
16:28
Speaker 1: month before Henry and Leon went to trial, Artists was
16:32
Speaker 1: tried and convicted for the attack on the eighteen year
16:34
Speaker 1: old girl. He was sentenced to death. And that fact
16:37
Speaker 1: almost gives away the punchline, because sure enough, Roscoe Artists
16:42
Speaker 1: was prosecuted by Joe Freeman Britt himself for a crime
16:45
Speaker 1: nearly identical to the one Britt was prosecuting Henry and Leon.
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Speaker 2: For.
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Speaker 1: The similarities between Artists's other murders and Sabrina's death should
16:54
Speaker 1: have been unmistakable.
16:55
Speaker 2: Those are a warning signs, stop lights to say, hey,
16:59
Speaker 2: wait a minute, let's see what really happened here, Let's
17:03
Speaker 2: look at people who more fit the profile.
17:06
Speaker 1: Well, Roscoe Artists was no stranger to law enforcement. That's
17:08
Speaker 1: what's so mind boggling about this case. It was all
17:12
Speaker 1: there ready to be done, right, and it was done
17:16
Speaker 1: so wrong, so wrong.
17:18
Speaker 2: This horrible, tragic nightmare could have been averted from the
17:22
Speaker 2: very get go, and the woman who Rascal Artists killed
17:27
Speaker 2: less than a month after Sabrina Buie was killed, her
17:31
Speaker 2: life might have been saved.
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Speaker 1: Not everyone overlooked the similarities between these murders. We know
17:36
Speaker 1: this because of what happened with a piece of forensic
17:39
Speaker 1: evidence in the case, a single unidentified fingerprint found on
17:42
Speaker 1: one of the beer cans near Sabrina's body. Three days
17:46
Speaker 1: before Henry and Leon's trial started, the police sent a
17:49
Speaker 1: request to the state crime Lab to compare that beer
17:52
Speaker 1: can fingerprint to the fingerprints of Roscoe Artists. But Joe Freeman,
18:00
Speaker 1: even before the crime lab had time to do the testing,
18:03
Speaker 1: Britt charged ahead with Henry and Leon's trial. And that
18:07
Speaker 1: trial was hardly a fair fight. You've got the deadliest
18:10
Speaker 1: da facing off against two disabled teenagers.
18:14
Speaker 2: Never stood a chance. It's going to be their word
18:18
Speaker 2: against the word of the police when this case goes
18:21
Speaker 2: to trial. How's somebody with a fifty six IQ or
18:24
Speaker 2: a forty nine IQ supposed to try to match their
18:28
Speaker 2: wits with a prosecutor like Joe Freeman Britt.
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Speaker 1: The heartbreaker was when Henry McCollum took the stand in
18:35
Speaker 1: his own defense with his typical flare. Joe Freeman Britt
18:39
Speaker 1: handled that cross examination himself. Didn't that touch your soul
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Speaker 1: at all? Britt asked, when that little girl was down
18:46
Speaker 1: on the ground hollering, it didn't touch my soul. Henry answered,
18:50
Speaker 1: because I didn't kill nobody. He added, I want to
18:54
Speaker 1: tell you something, Joe Freeman, God got your judgment right
18:58
Speaker 1: in hell waiting for you. It wasn't enough. The jury
19:04
Speaker 1: convicted both Henry and Leon based on the confessions. After
19:08
Speaker 1: the verdict came back that fingerprint testing appears to have
19:11
Speaker 1: been canceled.
19:13
Speaker 3: Jeff Freeman Brett was much more concerned and laser focus
19:17
Speaker 3: on pursuing the death penalty against Tenry McCollum and Leon
19:20
Speaker 3: Brown than he was in finding the real killer. They
19:25
Speaker 3: failed to pursue a fingerprint examination that I tend to
19:29
Speaker 3: think would have been very much determinative in this case,
19:32
Speaker 3: and I have to imagine that Joe Freeman Britt was
19:34
Speaker 3: part of that decision making process.
19:36
Speaker 1: The defense was never even told that police had requested
19:39
Speaker 1: fingerprint testing. Instead, that information remained hidden, and Henry and
19:44
Speaker 1: Leon were sent to North Carolina's death Row, right alongside
19:48
Speaker 1: Roscoe artists. A few years later, in nineteen eighty eight,
19:52
Speaker 1: a court overturned Henry and Leon's convictions, but Britt retried
19:56
Speaker 1: them both separately. In nineteen ninety one, at Leon's si
20:00
Speaker 1: second trial, the judge dismissed the murder charges against him,
20:03
Speaker 1: so Leon was convicted only of rape and sentenced to
20:06
Speaker 1: life in prison, not death. But Henry still faced murder
20:10
Speaker 1: charges and he was soon convicted again. His attorneys hoped
20:14
Speaker 1: that at least they might be able to save his
20:16
Speaker 1: life this time, but they were wrong. When Henry's sentence
20:19
Speaker 1: was read, he sat silently with his head down on
20:23
Speaker 1: the table, like a scared child. He had to go
20:26
Speaker 1: back to death Row. The case of Sabrina Buie's murder
20:41
Speaker 1: was closed, but not forgotten. That disabled kid who became
20:45
Speaker 1: a murder suspect because some high schoolers thought he looked
20:47
Speaker 1: weird was soon being singled out by a justice on
20:50
Speaker 1: the United States Supreme Court. But Henry McCollum's case was
20:54
Speaker 1: getting attention for all the wrong reasons. It was nineteen
20:59
Speaker 1: ninety four, and this the Preme Court was debating whether
21:01
Speaker 1: the United States should still have the death penalty in
21:04
Speaker 1: a case from Texas one, Justice Harry Blackman wrote that
21:08
Speaker 1: the death penalty should be ruled unconstitutional. Justice Blackman described
21:13
Speaker 1: how lethal injection works, how one human being injects drugs
21:17
Speaker 1: into another human's body in front of an audience, until
21:21
Speaker 1: the condemned person dies in front of them. The justice
21:24
Speaker 1: wrote about his experience of trying for twenty years to
21:27
Speaker 1: develop rules that would ensure a perfect death penalty process.
21:31
Speaker 1: After nearly two decades, he declared the task impossible. No
21:36
Speaker 1: set of rules would be able to guarantee that we
21:38
Speaker 1: only execute the guilty and only after the guilty receive
21:42
Speaker 1: a fair process. From this day forward, Justice Blackman wrote,
21:47
Speaker 1: I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.
21:52
Speaker 1: Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a scathing rebuttal, and this is
21:56
Speaker 1: where Henry and his brother Leon come in. Lethal injection,
21:59
Speaker 1: Justice Scalia wrote, looks pretty desirable compared to some of
22:03
Speaker 1: the worst murder cases. He urged readers to consider the
22:06
Speaker 1: case of the eleven year old girl killed by stuffing
22:10
Speaker 1: her panties down her throat. How enviable a quiet death
22:13
Speaker 1: by lethal injection compared with that. Justice Scalia was talking
22:18
Speaker 1: about the case of Sabrina Buwie.
22:21
Speaker 3: Justice Scalia said that if there's ever a case that
22:23
Speaker 3: warranted the death penalty, it's this one. Knowing what we
22:26
Speaker 3: know now about Henry Leon's innocence, I think it completely
22:31
Speaker 3: undermines any legal or moral argument behind that statement, because
22:35
Speaker 3: if this case could be held up as the poster
22:38
Speaker 3: case for the death penalty, and now we've discovered what
22:42
Speaker 3: an absolute mess of negligence and railroading it involved, then
22:47
Speaker 3: that means the entire system is undermined.
22:50
Speaker 1: The years ticked by and that rail roading started coming
22:53
Speaker 1: to light as the record of Joe Freeman Britz started
22:55
Speaker 1: getting some scrutiny. According to a report by Harvard Law
22:59
Speaker 1: School's Fair Punishment Project, Britt committed misconduct in fourteen cases.
23:05
Speaker 1: In Henry McCollum's case, the report said he failed to
23:08
Speaker 1: notify the defense not only about the Beercan fingerprint, but
23:13
Speaker 1: also about a cigarette butt found near Sabrina's body. In
23:17
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, more than twenty years after Sabrina died,
23:20
Speaker 1: Henry's post conviction lawyers asked for DNA testing on the
23:24
Speaker 1: traces of saliva left on the cigarette butt. That testing
23:28
Speaker 1: found a single male profile and it didn't belong to
23:31
Speaker 1: Henry or Leon. That evidence should have been enough to
23:34
Speaker 1: exonerate them right then and there.
23:36
Speaker 3: The testing wasn't sophisticated enough at that point to match
23:40
Speaker 3: it to someone else. Basically, we knew that it wasn't Henry's.
23:43
Speaker 3: We knew that it wasn't Leon's, but that's all that
23:45
Speaker 3: we knew.
23:46
Speaker 1: The profile couldn't be run through the national DNA database,
23:49
Speaker 1: and so Henry and Leon were denied exoneration because their
23:53
Speaker 1: lawyers couldn't tell the state whose DNA it really was.
23:57
Speaker 1: It took nearly nine years for the case to regain momentum.
24:01
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, with.
24:02
Speaker 3: The help of another inmate, Leon wrote to the North
24:05
Speaker 3: Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission and asked them to look into
24:08
Speaker 3: his case.
24:09
Speaker 2: The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is an independent state
24:16
Speaker 2: agency charged with investigating claims of actual innocence. But the
24:24
Speaker 2: Commission doesn't have an agenda. It's not here to prove
24:28
Speaker 2: that the defendants did not commit this crime. It's here
24:32
Speaker 2: to find the truth, and it's the only statewide agency
24:36
Speaker 2: like it in the.
24:37
Speaker 3: Countrys Inquiry Commission could say, we want to test this
24:40
Speaker 3: evidence we want access to these records. We want access
24:43
Speaker 3: to these boxes of evidence that it has been sitting
24:45
Speaker 3: on your shelf for thirty years. Hand them over to
24:47
Speaker 3: us right now. So that's an extraordinary power to have.
24:50
Speaker 2: There was no stone left unturned. They tested every hair,
24:55
Speaker 2: they tested rappers found at the crime scene. They tested
24:59
Speaker 2: beer ca They tested all of her clothing, her blouse,
25:03
Speaker 2: her shoes, her socks, her underpants. They tested cigarette butts.
25:10
Speaker 1: This time with more sophisticated testing, the cigarette butt DNA
25:14
Speaker 1: was able to be identified.
25:16
Speaker 3: It wasn't Henry's, it wasn't Leon's.
25:18
Speaker 2: When they ran it through the North Carolina database, they
25:22
Speaker 2: got a hit. They got a hit to Roscoe artists.
25:26
Speaker 3: We knew of Roscoe artists, we knew how early similar
25:29
Speaker 3: their crimes were.
25:30
Speaker 2: Roscoe artists who was living in the very same community,
25:35
Speaker 2: and a month later committed a very similar crime.
25:40
Speaker 1: That was enough. Henry and Leon's lawyers, including Representative Alston,
25:45
Speaker 1: asked the court to throw out their convictions based on
25:47
Speaker 1: DNA evidence of the real killer, and on September second,
25:51
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were exonerated in
25:56
Speaker 1: a Robinson County courtroom as the burden of wrongful conviction
26:02
Speaker 1: was lifted from him. Leon Brown smiled big, but all
26:05
Speaker 1: Henry mccoum could do was sit back in his chair,
26:09
Speaker 1: take a deep breath, and close his eyes. Both men
26:12
Speaker 1: had served nearly thirty one years in prison. Now finally
26:18
Speaker 1: they were going home.
26:22
Speaker 5: Oh I wait, yallow, no, what's my name? That's right,
26:28
Speaker 5: that's right.
26:33
Speaker 1: That's the gut us.
26:35
Speaker 4: Y'all, y'ave y'all, y'all.
26:38
Speaker 1: Do you think to make a doubly official? Both Henry
26:42
Speaker 1: and Leon received pardons from the North Carolina governor in
26:45
Speaker 1: June twenty fifteen. Joe Freeman Britt remained a firm believer
26:49
Speaker 1: in their guilt. When he heard about the pardons, Britt
26:52
Speaker 1: called the governor a damn fool. Today, Roscoe Artist remains
26:57
Speaker 1: behind bars in North Carolina. On appeal, his death sentence
27:00
Speaker 1: was converted to life in prison. For his part, Joe
27:04
Speaker 1: Freeman Britt died in twenty sixteen. So here's the thing.
27:11
Speaker 1: During the thirty one years that Henry spent on death row,
27:15
Speaker 1: he went through two capital trials. Twenty four jurors evaluated
27:19
Speaker 1: the evidence against him, and they all voted to convict.
27:22
Speaker 1: Over the years, more than twenty judges reviewed the case
27:25
Speaker 1: against him and said they found nothing wrong. Twelve defense
27:29
Speaker 1: attorneys represented him over the years. They all did their
27:32
Speaker 1: jobs just as the system expects them to. If it
27:35
Speaker 1: weren't for the Innocence Inquiry Commission, Henry would probably be
27:39
Speaker 1: dead today, executed by lethal injection. But North Carolina is
27:44
Speaker 1: the only state with a commission like that, even though
27:47
Speaker 1: twenty seven other states have the death penalty, and the
27:50
Speaker 1: commission can only take a tiny fraction of the cases
27:53
Speaker 1: that are brought to it. So I have to agree
27:56
Speaker 1: with Supreme Court Justice Blackman. We can have the best
27:59
Speaker 1: process in the world, but there is no such thing
28:02
Speaker 1: as a perfect death penalty.
28:04
Speaker 2: They're going to be errors in the fact that in
28:07
Speaker 2: some parts of a state the death penalty is sought
28:09
Speaker 2: more frequently than in other parts of the state. There
28:13
Speaker 2: are going to be errors in the kinds of cases,
28:16
Speaker 2: whether they are high publicity cases or not, or in
28:19
Speaker 2: the race of the victim. They're going to be disparities
28:22
Speaker 2: in the way these decisions are made. It's a human endeavor,
28:27
Speaker 2: so there are going to be errors.
28:31
Speaker 1: Henry McCollums not alone to date, one hundred and seventy
28:35
Speaker 1: two people have been exonerated off death rows nationwide, including
28:40
Speaker 1: at least nine in North Carolina. Have we saved every
28:44
Speaker 1: innocent person sentenced to death? There's no way. We haven't
28:48
Speaker 1: executed an innocent person, and it'll happen again until we
28:52
Speaker 1: abolish the death penalty for good.
28:54
Speaker 3: You know, someone hadn't written a letter on Leon's behalf
28:57
Speaker 3: to the Ince's Inquiry Commission not be here having this conversation.
29:01
Speaker 3: Henry and Leon would not have been released. And our
29:05
Speaker 3: criminal justice system, and our death penalty system in particular,
29:09
Speaker 3: shouldn't and can't, rely on luck to protect innocent people.
29:13
Speaker 1: Thanks to luck, perseverance, and good lawyering, Henry and Leon
29:17
Speaker 1: are survivors. Instead of living on death row, they can
29:20
Speaker 1: finally just live.
29:25
Speaker 5: I try to stay busy every day.
29:28
Speaker 2: That's Henry, my future wife. You know, she makes my days.
29:32
Speaker 3: She's sweet.
29:33
Speaker 5: When I get up in the morning, like five o'clock
29:36
Speaker 5: in the morning, you know, I make her coffee which
29:39
Speaker 5: she drinks deep cafee. I drink mine's black with no shiver.
29:44
Speaker 5: It's a lot of food that I enjoy eating. I
29:47
Speaker 5: like turn up greens, collar greens, and I said, my
29:51
Speaker 5: lady is the best one knew how to fix that
29:55
Speaker 5: baked chicken. For me, it feels good to breathe this
29:59
Speaker 5: air out here. It's good to have my freedom again.
30:04
Speaker 1: And here's Leon.
30:06
Speaker 6: My favorite thing to do is really, uh, listen to
30:09
Speaker 6: the radio odies and R and B classics, the seventies
30:14
Speaker 6: and eighties and nineties, some of the old school Stones
30:18
Speaker 6: songs that they don't make no more.
30:22
Speaker 2: And here the group won.
30:24
Speaker 6: You know, I try to treat everybody the way I
30:25
Speaker 6: would want to be treated. I guess that's why they
30:28
Speaker 6: like me the way they do. They keep me going,
30:31
Speaker 6: keep me laughing, and you know, night be here before
30:33
Speaker 6: you know it.
30:34
Speaker 2: The way the day be going. Man, it's always something
30:36
Speaker 2: to do.
30:51
Speaker 1: This episode is dedicated to Henry and Leon and to
30:54
Speaker 1: all the brave lawyers fighting to abolish the death penalty.
30:57
Speaker 1: Steve and I salute you. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
31:06
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
31:10
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one Special thanks to our executive producers
31:14
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis. Our production team is headed
31:17
Speaker 1: by Senior producer and Pope, along with producers Joshi Hammer
31:21
Speaker 1: and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed by Genie Montalvo.
31:25
Speaker 1: John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our music was composed
31:28
Speaker 1: by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or
31:32
Speaker 1: Twitter at Laura and I Rider, and you.
31:34
Speaker 2: Can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
31:37
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast
31:41
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram
31:44
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
31:49
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction