A pair of siblings who served decades behind
bars in the rape and murder of a North Carolina child will
walk out of prison free men Wednesday after DNA
evidence implicated someone else.
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were just teenagers
when they were arrested in 1983 and charged with the
rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in Red
Springs, about 30 miles southeast of Fayetteville in rural
Robeson County.
Buie's body was found in an area of Red Springs known
as something of a "lovers' lane," according to Joe
Freeman Britt, the district attorney who prosecuted them
in the '80s. The ground was littered with "beer cans,
condoms and cigarettes," Britt said.
It was one of those cigarette butts that ultimately set
them free.
DNA found on a cigarette "matched another individual
named Roscoe Artis, a convicted rapist and murderer
who lived less than 100 yards from where the victim's
body was found," said a statement from McCollum's and
Brown's attorneys.
Artis is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison
on a separate conviction. It was not immediately clear
Tuesday whether prosecutors would bring charges
against him for Buie's murder.
CNN Original Series: 'Death Row Stories'
"This is the most blessed day," Brown kept repeating
Tuesday, according to his attorney, Ann Kirby,
"It was an amazing moment for everyone," added
Vernetta Alston, an attorney for McCollum.
Only not everyone thought it was so amazing.
"This a tragic day for justice in Robeson County," said
Britt.
When asked whether Britt still believes he got the
conviction right, without hesitation, he said,
"absolutely."
"These guys got three trials. Thirty-six people reviewed
it and thought the confessions were correct," Britt told
CNN. "You know how hard it is to get a conviction in a
capital case?"
McCollum, 50, was 19 at the time of his arrest. He was
sentenced to death in 1984 and is North Carolina's
longest-serving death row inmate.
Brown, who is four
years younger than his half-brother, was initially
sentenced to death as well but later had it reduced to
life in prison.
Kirby and Alston said that their clients' confessions
were coerced and that both were "severely intellectually
disabled."
"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," said Ken Rose, a lawyer with the
Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
"It's impossible to put into words what these men have
been through and how much they have lost."
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