Local Editor

Two men convicted of murder in the United States and who served 30 years behind bars have been freed on Tuesday after DNA evidence implicated another man.

The two US men, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, had been in prison for 30 years in North Carolina since being convicted of murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1983.

Superior Court Judge Douglass Sasser ordered the immediate release of McCollum, 50, and Brown, 46.

A request for a review of the case was turned down by the United States Supreme Court in 1994.

The half brothers were convicted in the slaying of Sabrina Buie in Robeson County.
McCollum had been on death row for decades and his half brother Brown was serving a life sentence.

It would take at least until Wednesday before the required paperwork is done and the men are freed, said Keith Acree, a spokesman for the state prison system.

Moreover, a co-counsel for Brown said the case provided one of the most dramatic examples of false and coerced confessions in the US justice system.

Ken Rose, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, has represented McCollum for 20 years.

"It's terrifying that our justice system allowed two intellectually disabled children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to suffer there for 30 years," Rose said.

"Henry watched dozens of people be hauled away for execution. He would become so distraught he had to be put in isolation," she said.

"It's impossible to put into words what these men have been through and how much they have lost," she further said.

Their convictions were overturned after DNA evidence from a cigarette butt recovered at the crime scene implicated another man with a history of murder.

Meanwhile, the DNA showed that the real murderer was a 74-year-old man who is currently serving a life sentence for a different murder.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team