Speaker 1: Hi there, it's Laurini writer, and this time I'm here
Speaker 1: with some really encouraging news for anyone committed to true
Speaker 1: justice in this country. This is a case that was
Speaker 1: used by US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to justify
Speaker 1: why the death penalty exists. But as we'll hear in
Speaker 1: this episode, the murder he was using as proof that
Speaker 1: the death penalty should remain in place was in fact
Speaker 1: an egregious, wrongful conviction, exactly the reason why we should
Speaker 1: question death sentences in every case. Eventually, justice was served
Speaker 1: for Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. After thirty one years
Speaker 1: on death row. They were exonerated on the basis of
Speaker 1: actual innocence, and we're thrilled to tell you that since
Speaker 1: our episode first aired, they've also received compensation for what
Speaker 1: they went through. In May twenty twenty one, the brothers
Speaker 1: were awarded seventy five million dollars, the largest wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: verdict in US history. Over the years, their cases were
Speaker 1: reviewed by dozens of judges, lawyers, and jurors who couldn't
Speaker 1: see the truth of their innocence. With this settlement, finally,
Speaker 1: Henry and Leon were believed welcome to wrongful conviction, false confessions.
Speaker 1: I'm Laura and I writer, and I'm Steve Drewson. In
Speaker 1: today's episode, the crime is bad about as bad as
Speaker 1: it gets. But the way police and prosecutors mishandled this
Speaker 1: case and condemned two innocent men to death, that's a
Speaker 1: crime unto itself. Henry McCollum and his younger brother, Leon
Speaker 1: Brown survived a decades long fight for the truth from
Speaker 1: behind bars. Henry and Leon are living proof that false
Speaker 1: confessions can send innocent people to death row.
Speaker 2: Twenty years ago, the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which Laura
Speaker 2: and I codirect, was deeply involved in exonerating men off
Speaker 2: of death row in Illinois. The numbers kept ticking up.
Speaker 2: It went up to twenty people who had been wrongfully
Speaker 2: sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: Twenty innocent people. Eventually, Illinois lost confidence that the people
Speaker 1: on death row were actually guilty, and so we got
Speaker 1: 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. 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 3: To day.
Speaker 1: Story starts in Robison County, North Carolina. It's a rural
Speaker 1: area on the state's southern border, eighty miles inland from
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Coast. Since the eighteenth century, Robison County has
Speaker 1: been known for social strata and racial strife. It's a
Speaker 1: place where a small group of elite white men descended
Speaker 1: from colonial landowners, dominate everything from the lumber business to
Speaker 1: 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 Buie came home
Speaker 1: to his tiny house in one of Robison 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 Robinson 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 questioned
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 3: I think Henry is a very kind person. He's a
Speaker 3: 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 3: From the first time I met Henry in twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: It's my impression that his deficits were very obvious. I
Speaker 3: think anyone talking to him now, or five years ago
Speaker 3: or thirty years ago would have noticed, and so as
Speaker 3: a result of his deficits, he signed the statement. Now,
Speaker 3: I think most folks in that circumstance would understand that
Speaker 3: if they signed a confession to murder, that they wouldn't
Speaker 3: be allowed to walk out the front door of a
Speaker 3: police station. But the statement used language that Henry was
Speaker 3: very unlikely to have understood, and so he didn't know
Speaker 3: 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 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 borderline between moderately and severely disabled,
Speaker 1: and he was completely illiterate.
Speaker 3: Both of these men, who were at that time boys,
Speaker 3: their intellectual disabilities were exploited. Folks who have cognitive deficits
Speaker 3: that make it difficult or complicated for them to make
Speaker 3: everyday decisions to get dressed, to loan as schedule, to
Speaker 3: make food for themselves, to drive cars, to learn in
Speaker 3: school at a level that's consistent with their age. Folks
Speaker 3: who are unable to do those things, we shouldn't be
Speaker 3: holding them to the same standard in our criminal justice system,
Speaker 3: 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 4: This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
Speaker 4: and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international
Speaker 4: law firm. The u AIG pro Bono program provides free
Speaker 4: legal services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and
Speaker 4: individuals most in need. And recently they announced that working
Speaker 4: to reform the criminal justice system will become a key
Speaker 4: pillar of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had
Speaker 4: an unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance
Speaker 4: to the most vulnerable members of our society and in
Speaker 4: support of the public interest, including extensive work in the
Speaker 4: criminal 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: season 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 atturn me. By the time Henry
Speaker 1: and Leon's cases crossed his desk, Joe Freeman Britt had
Speaker 1: become 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 ripped 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 3: I think that that sums up who he was as
Speaker 3: a person and as a district attorney. Joe Freeman. Britt
Speaker 3: was frankly a terror. He was a large, commanding presence,
Speaker 3: and I think really leaned into that persona. I know
Speaker 3: that he was very from what I've read, he was
Speaker 3: very much into the theater of a courtroom and really
Speaker 3: 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 2: Leon or Henry. There was nothing other than their words
Speaker 2: that linked them to this crime, you know. And Henry
Speaker 2: and Leon were not the kinds of people that would
Speaker 2: have committed a perfect crime.
Speaker 1: Even the way in which the confessions were written didn't
Speaker 1: ring true.
Speaker 3: In a statement used language that Henry was very unlikely
Speaker 3: to have understood, and I think that's a product of
Speaker 3: his age and most certainly a product of his intellectual disabilities.
Speaker 3: And Leon's is similar. If you look at Leon's statement
Speaker 3: is written in penmanship that Leon was incapable of because
Speaker 3: of his deficits, and again used language and detail and
Speaker 3: just cent in structure that Leon would have been incapable
Speaker 3: 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 eerily 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 Artists was also a
Speaker 1: suspect in another rape 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. Rosco 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: For.
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, and it was done
Speaker 1: so wrong, so wrong.
Speaker 2: This horrible, tragic nightmare could have been averted from the
Speaker 2: very get go, and the woman who Rascal Artists killed
Speaker 2: less than a month after Sabrina Buie was killed, her
Speaker 2: 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 Freeman,
Speaker 1: even before the crime lab had time to do the testing,
Speaker 1: Britt charged ahead with Henry and Leon's trial. And that
Speaker 1: trial was hardly a fair fight. You've got the deadliest
Speaker 1: 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 Britt.
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 3: Jeff Freeman Brett was much more concerned and laser focus
Speaker 3: on pursuing the death penalty against Tenry McCollum and Leon
Speaker 3: Brown than he was in finding the real killer. They
Speaker 3: failed to pursue a fingerprint examination that I tend to
Speaker 3: think would have been very much determinative in this case,
Speaker 3: and I have to imagine that Joe Freeman Britt was
Speaker 3: 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 si
Speaker 1: second trial, the judge dismissed the murder charges against him,
Speaker 1: so Leon was convicted only of rape and sentenced to
Speaker 1: life in prison, not death. But Henry still faced murder
Speaker 1: charges and he was soon convicted again. His attorneys hoped
Speaker 1: that at least they might be able to save his
Speaker 1: life this time, but they were wrong. When Henry's sentence
Speaker 1: was read, he sat silently with his head down on
Speaker 1: the table, like a scared child. He had to go
Speaker 1: back to death Row. The case of Sabrina Buie's murder
Speaker 1: was closed, but not forgotten. That disabled kid who became
Speaker 1: a murder suspect because some high schoolers thought he looked
Speaker 1: weird was soon being singled out by a justice on
Speaker 1: the United States Supreme Court. But Henry McCollum's case was
Speaker 1: getting attention for all the wrong reasons. It was nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, and this the Preme Court was debating whether
Speaker 1: the United States should still have the death penalty in
Speaker 1: a case from Texas one, Justice Harry Blackman wrote that
Speaker 1: the death penalty should be ruled unconstitutional. Justice Blackman described
Speaker 1: how lethal injection works, how one human being injects drugs
Speaker 1: into another human's body in front of an audience, until
Speaker 1: the condemned person dies in front of them. The justice
Speaker 1: wrote about his experience of trying for twenty years to
Speaker 1: 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 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 Scalia was talking
Speaker 1: about the case of Sabrina Buwie.
Speaker 3: Justice Scalia said that if there's ever a case that
Speaker 3: warranted the death penalty, it's this one. Knowing what we
Speaker 3: know now about Henry Leon's innocence, I think it completely
Speaker 3: undermines any legal or moral argument behind that statement, because
Speaker 3: if this case could be held up as the poster
Speaker 3: case for the death penalty, and now we've discovered what
Speaker 3: an absolute mess of negligence and railroading it involved, then
Speaker 3: that means the entire system is undermined.
Speaker 1: The years ticked by and that rail roading started coming
Speaker 1: to light as the record of Joe Freeman Britz started
Speaker 1: getting some scrutiny. According to a report by Harvard Law
Speaker 1: School's Fair Punishment Project, Britt committed misconduct in fourteen cases.
Speaker 1: In Henry McCollum's case, the report said he failed to
Speaker 1: notify the defense not only about the Beercan 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 3: The testing wasn't sophisticated enough at that point to match
Speaker 3: it to someone else. Basically, we knew that it wasn't Henry's.
Speaker 3: We knew that it wasn't Leon's, but that's all that
Speaker 3: 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 3: The help of another inmate, Leon wrote to the North
Speaker 3: Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission and asked them to look into
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: Countrys Inquiry Commission could say, we want to test this
Speaker 3: evidence we want access to these records. We want access
Speaker 3: to these boxes of evidence that it has been sitting
Speaker 3: on your shelf for thirty years. Hand them over to
Speaker 3: 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 rappers found at the crime scene. They tested
Speaker 2: beer ca 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 3: 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 3: We knew of Roscoe artists, we knew how early similar
Speaker 3: 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 mccoum 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 finally
Speaker 1: they were going home.
Speaker 5: Oh I wait, yallow, no, what's my name? That's right,
Speaker 5: that's right.
Speaker 1: That's the gut us.
Speaker 4: Y'all, y'ave y'all, y'all.
Speaker 1: Do you think to make a doubly official? Both Henry
Speaker 1: and Leon received pardons from the North Carolina governor in
Speaker 1: June twenty fifteen. Joe Freeman Britt remained a firm believer
Speaker 1: in their guilt. When he heard about the pardons, Britt
Speaker 1: called the governor a damn fool. Today, Roscoe Artist remains
Speaker 1: behind bars in North Carolina. On appeal, his death sentence
Speaker 1: was converted to life in prison. For his part, Joe
Speaker 1: 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 they are high publicity cases or not, or in
Speaker 2: the race of the victim. They're 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 3: You know, someone hadn't written a letter on Leon's behalf
Speaker 3: to the Ince's Inquiry Commission not be here having this conversation.
Speaker 3: Henry and Leon would not have been released. And our
Speaker 3: criminal justice system, and our death penalty system in particular,
Speaker 3: shouldn't and can't, rely on luck to protect innocent people.
Speaker 1: Thanks to luck, perseverance, and good lawyering, Henry and Leon
Speaker 1: are survivors. 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 future wife. You know, she makes my days.
Speaker 3: She's sweet.
Speaker 5: When I get up in the morning, like five o'clock
Speaker 5: in the morning, you know, I make her coffee which
Speaker 5: she drinks deep cafee. I drink mine's black with no shiver.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of food that I enjoy eating. I
Speaker 5: like turn up greens, collar greens, and I said, my
Speaker 5: lady is the best one knew how to fix that
Speaker 5: baked chicken. For me, it feels good to breathe this
Speaker 5: 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, uh, listen to
Speaker 6: the radio odies and R and B classics, the seventies
Speaker 6: and eighties and nineties, some of the old school Stones
Speaker 6: songs that they don't make no more.
Speaker 2: And here the group won.
Speaker 6: You know, I try to treat everybody the way I
Speaker 6: would want to be treated. I guess that's why they
Speaker 6: like me the way they do. They keep me going,
Speaker 6: keep me laughing, and you know, night be here before
Speaker 6: 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. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one Special thanks to our executive producers
Speaker 1: Jason Flamm and Kevin Wardis. Our production team is headed
Speaker 1: by Senior producer and Pope, along with producers Joshi Hammer
Speaker 1: and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed by Genie Montalvo.
Speaker 1: John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our music was composed
Speaker 1: by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or
Speaker 1: Twitter at Laura and I Rider, and you.
Speaker 2: Can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction