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