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